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THE HOUSE OF 
BROKEN DREAMS 


CHRISTINE JOPE-SLADE 


















THE HOUSE OF 
BROKEN DREAMS 


BY 


CHRISTINE JOPE-SLADE 

it 


NEW 


YORK 


GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY 




COPYRIGHT, 1024; 

By GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY 


f 


7 


0 


•o 




THE HOUSE OP BROKEN DREAMS 
—C— 

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA 


THE HOUSE OF BROKEN 
DREAMS 


THE HOUSE OF 
BROKEN DREAMS 


Chapter I 

i 

T ONDON wrapped helplessly in a great gold wave 
of August sunshine, bleaching the very shadows 
that would have stemmed its molten onrush, so that 
they lay fragile as lace across the pavement under the 
railings of the Temple Gardens and again in a waver¬ 
ing grey line where the parapet divided the sequined 
glitter of the river from the hard glare of the road. 

Two young men, hot and tired and irritable, stopped 
for a second in the shadow of one of the plane trees. 
It had a deceptive gossamer quality that afforded no 
real respite from the hectic sun, but the short, sturdy 
young man unscrewed his aching blue eyes sufficiently 
to twinkle up at his companion. 

“You're a prig, Angus, a prig wallowing in his 
priggishness. You make me tired!" 

“It's my duty, Bobbie. Once you’ve seen your 
duty. . . 

“Damn it! you’re married to it.” 

The tall young man laughed. His hair, his face, 
7 


8 The House of Broken Dreams 

his eyes were brown. A young evening breeze fluting 
adventurously in the leaves above his head, shifted 
them, and the yellow sunlight came through and var¬ 
nished his brownness. 

“Look here, Bobbie, what's the use of getting 
rattled?" 

“I hate to see a good man go wrong. Look here 
. . . think of it! Paris! Italy! Spain! Egypt! 
. . . and you're going to stay here and turn your¬ 
self into a blinking creche! Is it fair on me?" 

“Is it fair on them to go?" 

“Apparently they’re busy praying you will." 

“It was all right while their father was alive. One 
supposes he kept this rag-tag and bobtail in order, but 
to go abroad and leave those two girls to cope with 
them and that boy to run wild. It’s unthinkable." 

“You want to interfere, Angus. Why not look 
things straight in the face? Other people’s troubles 
are often much more exciting than your own happi¬ 
ness. You’re going to enjoy it." 

“They’ve got my back up," Angus Reid owned 
curtly. 

“Ah! now we get it! They’ve got your back up!" 
Robert de Bouton grinned. “All right, Angus, but 
for God’s sake be honest with yourself about motives, 
that’s all. Priggishness isn’t a virtue, it’s a state of 
personal preservation. I’m telling you you’ve never 
lived. I want you to live. All your life you’ve been 
doing your duty by someone. It’s become a bad 
habit. It’s growing on you." 

Angus Reid laughed. He linked his arm in his 
friend’s. 


The House of Broken Dreams 


9 

“Good old puffing Bobbie,” he said easily. “We 
never see alike in anything. Barton will be gone if 
we don’t buck up.” 


ii 

The lawyer received them gravely. 

They were hot from climbing his dusty, sun- 
spangled stairs; his room was narrow, dim, unbeliev¬ 
ably cool. It was like entering water. It suited him. 
Entrenched behind his huge desk he was not unlike 
some watchful, wily old carp; faded, a little bleached 
and slumberous, with ugly outstanding ears on either 
side of his narrow head, like gills. 

He said: 

“It is hot to-day, quite a record heat. The Evening 
News says we have broken the record for ten years. 
Remarkable! I suppose you have come to see me 
about the O’Rane trusteeship? Do you propose to 
accept it, Mr. Reid?” 

Angus Reid said he did. 

“Admirable,” said the lawyer. 

“Damnable!” exploded Robert de Bouton. 

The lawyer looked at him. It was as if something 
had darted past him in the water, neither interesting 
nor frightening, but faintly disturbing. It was as 
if he waited for the ripples to subside before he said: 
“It is only fair to tell you they are incensed at the 
idea of a guardian and trustee. I understand they 
will resist the slightest interference. Briefly, I gather 
they are already in a state of siege.” 

“From whom?” 


lo The House of Broken Dreams 

‘‘From Miss Fannie O’Rane. She was here this 
morning. She was extremely excited. The whole 
position is most awkward. I pointed out that it was a 
difficult position for a young man of twenty-six to be 
suddenly left sole guardian and trustee to a family. 
She seemed to derive amusement from the idea, con¬ 
siderable amusement.” 

“Is she pretty?” broke in Robert de Bouton. 

“I do not know that it matters at this juncture.” 

“Or any juncture,” added Angus Reid curtly. 

The lawyer put his arms on the desk. Robert crossed 
his leg and a gleam of sun crept through the shades 
and settled on the toe of his shoe. It set a silver 
butterfly shimmering in the cloudiness of the high ceil¬ 
ing. Until the lawyer spoke it seemed the only live 
thing in a dead and dank world. He said very slowly: 

“Mr. Reid, I went there.” 

The room came suddenly to life, Robert de Bouton's 
toe became so still that the butterfly poised above them. 

“Well?” said Angus Reid. 

The lawyer shrugged. “Unbelievable!” he said. 
“Simply unbelievable!” 

“In what way?” 

“An almshouse for down-at-heels ragamuffins, 
neither more nor less. I was appalled. Impossible 
people, dangerous people. I met a curate and his wife 
there. I said something of the sort to him. He was 
furious. I told him it was idealism gone mad. He 
said the Bible was full of that; they’re those sort of 
people.” 

“They must have money to run a place like that 
Suppose I stop their allowance?” 


The House of Broken Dreams 11 

“I should not counsel anything rash, Mr. Reid.” 

“Of what does the household consist?” 

The lawyer put his thumbs and little fingers slowly 
together, widened his hands to a trellis, fitted it slowly 
over his nose and mouth and spoke through it. 

“Miss Fannie O’Rane, twenty-three; Kane O’Rane 
—she is twenty. July O’Rane, twelve and a half; and 
Patrick O’Rane, fifteen.” 

“And the rest?” 

“I met an old violinist, a penniless painter, a clown 
past work, a poet, and I believe there are other pen¬ 
sioners.” 

“They shall be cleared out.” 

“Steady, Mr. Reid, steady now! They are pre¬ 
pared for you to take that particular point of view 
and action . . . they are prepared.” 

“In what way?” 

“They have put their heads together. An alteration 
in the present arrangement suits none of them.” 

“I presume I can enforce authority?” 

“Legally, yes.” 

“The police ...” broke in Robert de Bouton. 

“Miss Fannie mentioned that this morning,” said 
the lawyer. “Publicity would be most undesirable, 
embarrassing. The whole thing makes a romantic 
story, the sort of story the Press loves to get hold of. 
It would be difficult for Mr. Reid. It appears that 
Miss Fannie and this old poet have written it up in 
anticipation. I must say as she read it to me it seemed 
full of points, not without wit, considerable wit. I 
should put the police and the attendant publicity out 
of my mind definitely. I should really, Mr. Reid.” 


12 The House of Broken Dreams 

"‘Did Miss O’Rane ask any questions about me?” 

“She appeared entirely uninterested.” 

“If I were you, Angus, I should let them go to the 
devil their own way.” 

Angus Reid looked at his friend. Mr. Barton 
looked at Angus Reid, then he appeared to slumber 
behind his cage of latticed fingers. Angus explained to 
Robert de Bouton. 

“Harry O’Rane and my father were pals at school, 
then at Oxford. Then Mr. O’Rane married a street 
harpist and Peter married mother, and then . . .” 

The lawyer smiled thinly behind the mask of his 
interlaced fingers. Robert de Bouton said: “Quite.” 

Angus said suddenly: 

“I shall write to Miss O’Rane and ask her if she 
will put me up while I am in town. Where is their 
house ?” 

“In Soho, Mr. Reid. One of those quiet, old- 
fashioned houses in a quiet square, very pleasant. Not 
many of them left now. You go through a street 
full of cheap restaurants, and suddenly you come to 
it. Delightful. I was charmed. You have quite 
decided to accept the trusteeship?” 

“Mr. O’Rane’s letter made it difficult to refuse.” 

“It is a question of sentiment.” 

“I see it as a duty. What education have these 
young people had?” 

“I should say they have accumulated a tremendous 
amount of general knowledge.” 

“I wish you’d ask them to put me up too, Angus?” 

Angus Reid rose and held out his hand. 

“I’ll come to-morrow and go through Mr. O’Rane’s 


The House of Broken Dreams 13 

papers with you. It seems to me the first thing to do 
is to gain admittance to the house and see how things 
lie.” 

“They wouldn’t mind putting me up,” interrupted 
Robert de Bouton eagerly. “It seems a sort of hotel.” 

They went down the sun-flecked stairs side by side. 
In the Temple the shadows had spread, the light had 
mellowed, the Thames ran between her grey banks 
like a gilt ribbon, the scribble of roofs was sharp 
against the fading sky. 

“It would be a lark to change places,” said Robert 
de Bouton. “They don’t know either of us. Now 
that’s an idea.” 

Angus Reid said with a faint, pleased smile: “It’s 
going to be difficult, very difficult. I’d like to talk 
to Marjorie about it.” 

“Hampstead?” I don’t think I’ll come, Angus. 

“Why not?” 

“Too bracing,” answered Robert de Bouton vaguely. 
hi 

As the taxi hurried through the jostling carnival 
of the Strand, swirled past the square frown of St. 
Martins-in-the-Fields and darted up the Charing Cross 
Road, Angus Reid felt solidly, comfortably mature. He 
was about to legislate and administrate. It was in the 
execution of these offices that he had hitherto most 
clearly realized himself. He was able to stand back 
and watch himself at work, and admire the neatness 
and surety with which his tidy, logical, compartmented 
mind functioned. The conditions of his life had made 


14 The House of Broken Dreams 

this attitude almost subconscious : a widowed mother 
with property, voluble ineffectual spinster aunts with 
incomes derived from the same source, a crowd of 
advice-claiming, timid elderly friends of his mother’s. 
These had fostered that consciousness of living more 
vitally, more solidly, when he was coping with affairs. 
He liked to be surrounded by them, chirping like 
sparrows, advising, suggesting, explaining, and let 
his mind dart away with the untidy mess and muddle 
of their problems, sort it all out like a neat housemaid, 
and, while they still fumbled and quibbled, pass it back, 
sorted, solved, arranged. It gave him a satisfying, 
almost thrilling, feeling of reality, so that he moved 
among these dependent, rootless minds like a real per¬ 
son among shadows. It was the only expression of 
power open to him, and he enjoyed power. 

He was half conscious that that was the motive 
that had been behind his acceptance of the guardian¬ 
ship of the O’Rane family. He was too honest to shy 
away from it. He looked it squarely in the face. 

He smiled a little as the taxi threaded its way 
through Camden Town. 

The glare had abated, the heat had lessened. As 
the taxi chugged up the gritty incline of Haverstock 
Hill his strained eyes rested gratefully on trees. The 
roar of London dropped back. Men in tennis flannels 
were hurrying up the hill, a couple of Japanese turned 
out of a side street and louped under his car and 
across the road like lithe little animals. It pleased him; 
he liked to see men playing games, women sewing, 
children playing, kittens chasing their tails. His emo¬ 
tional side was so undeveloped that he honestly believed 


The House of Broken Dreams ij 

conventional actions to be a sign of national health and 
individual purity and goodness. 

It seemed almost like a personal compliment when 
he found Marjorie Moneypenny sewing in the garden. 

The Moneypennys possessed one of those delightful 
slumbering houses that Hampstead still cradles jeal¬ 
ously in leafy arms. It had been built originally in 
green fields, and being guarded by tall trees never 
woke to consciousness of the maze of houses that had 
grown up round it, and never lost its friendly, welcom¬ 
ing, country-house expression. There was something 
at once dignified and pathetic in the wide-eyed inno¬ 
cence of its many windows, the blandness of its easily 
opened oak door. 

Augustus Moneypenny was a Hampstead enthusiast. 
His rooms were full of old paintings and prints of 
Hampstead, his library full of books about it. The 
purchase of Keats’ house for the nation had been like 
a wedding in the family. The erection of a new house 
on an old site was like a funeral. 

The desecrating hand of the garden expert had 
never been permitted in the Moneypenny property. 
Marjorie Moneypenny in white linen greeted Angus 
in surroundings from which Kate Greenaway might 
have just flitted. 

“Hasn’t it been hot!” she said. “Are you thirsty, 
Angus ?” 

Her smile, her eyes, her hair were bright and a little 
hard. It was as if Nature having secured a certain 
finish had lacquered and left her; one could not imagine 
her smile, her eyes or her hair fading or softening. 

“Where’s Bobbie de Bouton?” 


The House of Broken Dreams 


16 

“Oh, Bobbie couldn’t come.” 

“Are you going abroad with him?” 

“No, I’ve definitely decided not to. Where’s your 
mother ?” 

“In the house, probably crying. They're going ” she 
sighed. 

“I thought they only came in on Saturday.” 

“That’s all. Someone told mother the tradespeople 
told the maids how many times she changed and that 
was why they wouldn’t stay. Since then we’ve changed 
our tradespeople with every new maid. Mother’s 
writing to Harrods to deliver bread, but we’ve come 
to the end of the local milkmen.” 

“Where’s your father?” 

“Oh, he found a book on Hampstead in Petticoat 
Lane and he’s gone to see if there really is a well in 
someone’s garden.” 

“I’ve decided to accept the trusteeship. Bobbie de 
Bouton says I’m a prig.” 

“Oh, well!”—she dismissed that easily—“he’s half 
French.” 

The garden was cool with twilight; stars twinkled 
like forgotten toys in the branches above her head. 
Angus looked at the neat straight gilt of Marjorie’s 
hair, the bright blueness of her direct eye. 

“You’re awfully understanding,” he submitted. 

Marjorie smiled. She had no idea she had a com- 
partmented mind into which people threw small troubles 
to be sorted out and little joys to be approved. She 
had no idea how nervously her friends fed her through 
the narrow openings in her sympathies fearing lest 
anything too lively, unwieldy or uncatalogued should 


The House of Broken Dreams 17 

get through and upset her tight little mental perfection. 
Angus liked her because he never had anything but 
small and tidy offerings to present, and she assimilated 
those easily and gracefully. 

'‘What sort of people are the O’Ranes?” 

“Awful!” 

“In what way?” 

“Every way. You simply can’t run life on senti¬ 
ment and ideals, Marjorie. You must Have a settled 
plan and discipline. O’Rane ran a sort of open house 
for rotters.” 

“What sort of rotters?” 

“Artists, writers, musicians, an old clown.” 

“Good gracious!” 

“I’m going to clear them out and put the household 
in order. The girls must go abroad, the boy must be 
educated. It’s no good letting people grow up like 
that. They’re a danger to the community.” 

“Will they mind?” 

“Apparently they’re in a state of siege now.” 

“Who?” 

“All of them. You can understand the pensioners 
don’t want to be turned out of free board and lodging, 
and the O’Ranes prefer their Bohemian mode of life. 
I daresay it’s more exciting. Miss Fannie appears to 
be the chief rebel. Of course she’s outside my juris¬ 
diction. She’s of age, but the others are minors. I’m 
not going to let those wastrels batten on the O’Rane 
children anyway. I expect that’s why O’Rane nomi¬ 
nated a guardian when he died. He saw the peril of 
the future, brought up as he had brought them up, and 
leaving them in the circumstances he did.” 


18 The House of Broken Dreams 

“It really is extraordinary!” 

Mrs. Moneypenny wandered through the French 
windows and came towards them; although she was 
nearly fifty her hair and eyes and smile were nearly as 
gleaming and bright as her daughter’s; only with her 
something had slackened and withered beneath the 
lacquer. Her voice was quite feeble. 

“How do you do, Angus? Hasn’t it been hot? 
You are going to stay to supper, aren’t you? That’s 
right. Marjorie, I’ve just thought; it’s no good having 
Harrods. They go next door.” 

“Try Whiteleys,” advised Marjorie briskly. 

Mrs. Moneypenny turned to Angus. Her lower lip 
trembled. 

“Fancy!” she said, “I only asked her for hot water 
in the bedrooms before dinner, and only last night I 
sent them to the cinema. I feel they don’t bother 
about me at registry offices any more, and I’ve spent 
pounds on advertising.” 

Marjorie said after her mother had gone: 

“The O’Ranes haven’t ever seen you, Angus?” 

“No.” 

“Well, I don’t think Bobbie Bouton’s is a bad idea.” 

“What idea?” 

“Let them think you are he when you go there. It 
would give you time to look round, and they would’nt 
be suspicious of you, only of him.” 

“Good gracious!” I’m not afraid of the O’Ranes. 
I’m their legal guardian. Look here! I’ll tell you 
what Barton said about the legal position.” 

When he had finished Marjorie said: 


The House of Broken Dreams 19 

“Well, my dear boy, you don’t want to get in the 
papers.” 

“No, I don’t.” 

“A girl like that isn’t handicapped by any sense of 
honour or fair play.” 

“I’m not going to give in.” 

“It’s no good using force,” said Marjorie. 

She looked at him. In the growing darkness his 
brown eyes looked very liquid, almost black, his face 
was strong and oval. She’d often thought of marrying 
Angus. They thought alike, or rather they assimilated 
the same sort of thoughts and impressions, they en¬ 
joyed the same prejudices. They would have a very 
happy, shiny, chintzy sort of home, and, unlike her 
mother, she would keep her servants. 

Mrs. Moneypenny called them in to supper. 

Angus thought how pleasant it would be if they 
were going through the square of yellow light made 
by the windows to their own supper table without Mrs. 
Moneypenny. The thought was like a cushion put for 
his mind. He rested on it, idly. 

“Wine or lemonade, Angus?” said Mrs. Money- 
penny. “We can’t have a new milkman, Marjorie; 
I’ve used the last. He’s very deaf. He couldn’t talk 
to them unless they shouted. I’ve never heard them 
shouting. Shall I tell them we’ll do without the hot 
water in our bedrooms and ask them to stay?” 

“I shouldn’t, mother.” 

“I think I will, Marjorie. It’s so difficult, Angus. 
I’d like to live in a hotel.” 

“It’s no good, mother. They’ve got another place.” 


20 The House of Broken Dreams 

“But they haven’t been out since they came here!” 

“I know. The milkman found it for them.” 

IV 

When Angus left the Moneypennys he walked home. 
He was in a queer mood. His mind ran in its accus¬ 
tomed grooves and then he pulled up sharply. He 
could not understand why it should pull up. His mind 
was unaccustomed to explorative excursions, it trav¬ 
elled towards clearly defined destinations. 

Haverstock Hill was sharply black and white as he 
descended it; beyond Chalk Farm the hot yellow glare 
of lights engulfed him again. He tried to hitch his 
oddly pirouetting mind on to Marjorie Moneypenny 
but it refused to be hitched. The thought of her dulled 
him a little. It was as if she strayed, bright-eyed and 
neatly coiffured as usual, in blouse and skirt into a 
world that had inexplicably become en fete. He was 
sincerely troubled that he could no longer contemplate 
her with his usual gratitude for her healthy brightness, 
her practical common sense, her extreme comeliness. 

Camden Town seemed to him strangely beautiful, 
full of tingling colour, great pools and oblongs and 
discs of extraordinary brilliance, the heaped shininess 
of plums and greengages and apricots on the barrows, 
the shinier ruby of the glistening meat, the silveriness 
of the fish stalls; the great bottles of coloured water 
in the chemists’ shops glowed like mammoth fruit, and 
threading through this the people, black and white, 
somehow like pierrots and pierrettes in a highly deco- 


The House of Broken Dreams 21! 

rated carnival, with their questing colourless faces and 
their empty eyes. 

At Mornington Crescent he turned off towards 
Bloomsbury and life dropped behind him, and the 
world grew black and white again and almost hushed. 

It was a queer, unreal night, a night given over 
to summer magic with a cold moon rising high and 
clouds that seemed millions of miles off like black 
mountains. The houses, too, were like fallen black 
velvet mountains crouching on either side of him, 
making him feel incredibly little and lonely and some¬ 
how pathetic to himself. The shadows mothered 
lovers, the night was so still that their murmurs, their 
low laughter, even their kisses tip-toed across to him 
on it and seemed to tickle his ear mischievously. 

He thought he would find out where the O’Ranes 
lived and have a look at their house. He tried to accept 
the idea of a sudden whim, but he knew it had been 
with him as a definite intention even before he left the 
Moneypennys. 

He had great difficulty in finding it. The moon had 
reached the ebony mountains, the bald face of the 
clock that seemed to hang from the stars registered one 
o'clock. 

Yet he did not find it. It found him. It found him 
in the queer way a church will suddenly find you—like 
a quiet answer to an unspoken question. He came out 
of a little, petty, twittering, prying street, the home of 
the smell of a thousand dishes, into the peace of it. 

There was a garden in the square. He went into it 
and the trees spread themselves between him and the 
stars like lace over diamonds. 


22 The House of Broken Dreams 

He did not hunt for the O’Ranes’ house. He sat 
down on a seat and shut his eyes, and the darkness 
seemed to confer greater privacy than he had ever 
known. 

Somewhere in the street he had left, a man, prob¬ 
ably drunk, was singing in a powerful, unmusical voice. 
It had hardly any inflection or notes. In the little 
garden it had the mysterious monotony of a priest’s 
chant. 

One by one his drilled thoughts slipped out of their 
niches and went to play by themselves so that they 
were no longer his docile, familiar pupils but gay little 
unknowns who bewildered him. He seemed to run 
helplessly from one group to another. 

He knew he had found the garden unlocked by 
chance because he could smell night-scented stocks, and 
he knew London dare not leave her flowers un¬ 
guarded, but cherishes them with all her other imported 
treasures. 

He opened his eyes and saw a little statue through 
the trees. 

It was like something cut out in white paper and 
laid on black velvet, so stark and pale it was. It had 
goat’s feet. It piped. It seemed to Angus it had piped 
time to a standstill, but when he looked at the clock 
that hung among the stars he saw that an hour had 
been stolen from him and lost. 

It was two o’clock in the morning. 

As he sought the exit to the twittering street he 
found the O’Ranes’ house. It was tall and narrow and 
elegant like the others. The solidity of its front door 


The House of Broken Dreams 23 

seemed almost like a rebuff. He stared up at it, and 
its darkened windows stared blindly down. 

He raised his hat to it, and the foreignness of the 
action and the impulse woke him with a sort of 
shock. The magic of the night evaporated like mist. 
Marjorie Moneypenny came back suddenly like a real 
person into a dream. 

Behind that door was muddle and overgrown ideals 
and disordered convention. 

He was angry with himself like a man who has 
lost his way and had to find it again. Incredible that 
he should have lost it, because he knew it so well. 

Things wanted putting straight, people wanted put¬ 
ting straight behind that door. 

O’Rane had trusted him to do those necessary things 
he hadn’t the strength of character to do himself. 

He’d get behind that door by hook or by crook and 
see what common sense would do. He felt his common 
sense rush up to him in incredible strength; backed 
by that he could force anything. 

Victory was in his walk when he left the square. 

Bobbie Bouton was asleep on the sofa of their hotel 
sitting-room when he came in. 

He sat up, absurdly rumbled, and pointed grinning 
to the clock. 

“Been getting engaged all this time?” 

“No.” 

Bobbie’s brilliant blue eyes twinkled. 

“That’s good. Look here, I’ve been thinking the 
devil of a lot about this O’Rane business. It’s not a 
bit of good your going swashbuckling in.” 


24 The House of Broken Dreams 

“I don’t propose to.” 

Bobbie said, “Sorry, milord, sorry.” 

v 

They held a council of war. 

The blinds were half drawn so that glittering square 
gold mats of sunshine lay immediately below the win¬ 
dows of each end of the room and the rest was purplish 
shadow. Where it was deepest and softest they sat 
at an old round table, their elbows on it, staring at 
each other, three girls and a boy. 

The boy said with a thrill of sheer glee in his voice, 
“I hereby declare a state of siege,” and laughed. 

The three girls did not laugh, they stared at each 
other with great, soft, serious eyes. Then Kane 
O’Rane said with a funny, impatient little wriggle of 
her shoulders: 

J “You can cut that out, Pat. Fannie is all right, 
but the rest of us are minors. He can do anything 
with us, anything with you.” 

“I’d like to see him! Huh! I suppose I could run 
away! Huh!” 

Kane said, still wriggling her shoulders with nervous 
impatience: “Oh! Pat! don’t be younger than you 
need! It’s so trying!” 

Fannie O’Rane got up from the table abruptly and 
walked to the window that faced the square. She 
stood on the mat of sunlight and became a figure in 
gold; pale gold her bare, angular, little-girl arms 
gripped behind her back, vivid gold the brown of her 
dress, deeper gold her crown of frizzy hair. This gold 


The House of Broken Dreams 25 

figure standing square addressed them in the shadow 
over its shoulder. It said: “It’s all so difficult. We 
don’t want to antagonize him because we don’t quite 
know what his power is. He comes into the house 
as an enemy, but we mustn’t deny him admittance 
because he could force it if he wanted to. Oh dear! 
Oh dear! I’m only just beginning to realize what 
peculiar people we are.” 

Kane O’Rane’s voice crisped from the shadows. 

“I don’t see that.” 

“No, if you weren’t you would.” 

Pat O’Rane broke out, “Why can’t we fight him, 
Fannie ?” 

Kane reined him in promptly: “My good young 
ass!” 

When Fannie O’Rane moved out of the sunlight 
the room seemed to go dark. She said: 

“It’s all so difficult, my dears. We’ve lived so out 
of the world here. I don’t know whether you can 
understand. I saw it when that lawyer talked. I mean, 
he showed me that the world thought father quite, 
quite mad. I think when the world was younger and 
there weren’t so many people wanting so many things 
there were more like Daddy. There aren’t any now. 
Father was a sentimentalist, an emotionalist. When 
the lawyer talked I suddenly saw things. I’m only 
trying . . . trying to tell you that it will, it 

must seem like a lunatic asylum to Angus Reid and 
his friend. People don’t assume personal responsibil¬ 
ity for other people . . . they pay rates and build 

workhouses . . . and . . . and screw enough out 
of people’s fears of hell and hope of Heaven to build 


26 


The House of Broken Dreams 


institutions for people other people have kicked down! 
That’s what they do! People don’t work for indi¬ 
viduals, they don’t care about individuals. They work 
for something they call ‘the Race’ or ‘the Community’; 
it gives them a sense of power ... it gives them 
more scope. People like old Pip . . . they ticket 

them and tie them up in bundles and keep them some¬ 
where till they die. All over London there are old 
people being kept in bunches till they die; in work- 
houses and almshouses, and young people kept in 
creches and institutions and their ideas nipped off and 
their ambitions trimmed so that they shall fit in all 
the little dull corners of life where no one wants to 
be and round things off. I want you to see that 
. . . that those two young men thought father 

was mad, that’s all.” 

Judy burst out: 

“But Fannie, they couldn’t turn old Pip and Miss 
Proctor out . . . after all these years. Why! 

They’re so old! They were father’s pensioners.” 

Fannie said in a low voice: “That’s what I’m 
afraid of, Judy dear. That’s what I’m going to fight. 
Daddy left no instructions, no provision for them in 
his will. My share of the money isn’t sufficient to 
keep things going here and Mr. Reid has full control 
over yours. He can withhold. It is because of that 
we must propitiate him. Those old people . . . 

they’re like children,” she stopped and choked, she 
flung her hands out. “It’s unthinkable! unthinkable!” 

Judy wailed: 

“What did Daddy do it for! What did he make 
Angus Reid our guardian for! We were so happy!” 


The House of Broken Dreams 27 

“I think he got frightened. He realized when he 
was dying that he hadn't left us any real place in life. 
He made a place for us with his own brain and he 
was taking it with him.” 

Someone in the room below began to play a minuet. 
They played very sedately, softly. The player seemed 
to hesitate a little, the music came as if it were remem¬ 
bered rather than seen. 

“Every day she practises,” Fannie said; her lips 
trembled. “It isn’t only them we’ve got to guard 
. . . it’s their precious unfulfilled dreams. We’ve 

got to make Angus Reid see them as we see them 
. . . as Daddy saw them! Children! help me! 

help me! I’m afraid of Angus Reid. He’s got such 
awful power.” 

Kane O’Rane said: 

“You haven’t told them anything about Mr. Reid?” 

“Nothing! They’ll think he and his friend are two 
more of poor old Daddy’s down-on-their-lucks”— 
again she flung out her hands. “This isn’t a real 
world we are living in. Daddy built it for us as he 
saw it . . . and no one sees like Daddy.” 

“I mustn’t tell him what I think?” 

“No one must tell him what they think, Judy. He’s 
coming here to look around, probably to prepare a 
plan of action. He’ll have to think; all we can hope 
for is to train him a little to think our way.” 

“Will he send me to school?” 

“I don’t know, Pat. He’ll probably want to. He’s 
coming to impose convention on us and conventional 
thinking. We know; that. He’s a conventional 
young man.” 


28 The House of Broken Dreams 

“I shall loathe him,” said Judy. 

“You mustn’t show it. Don’t put his back up. 
Whatever you do, don’t put his back up! Remember, 
we have no place in his scheme of things, none at all. 
We’ve got to find him a place in ours.” 

Kane O’Rane said slowly: “It’s going to be awfully, 
awfully difficult.” 

“I shall ask him not to mention his mission to 
... to those others,” said Fannie. “Father gave 
them what they had never had . . . Security. I 
won’t have it filched from them.” 

“When are they coming?” said Pat. 

“To-morrow.” 

“Why is he bringing a friend?” 

“I don’t know,” said Fannie, “I don’t know.” 

VI 


They arrived at twilight. They came swinging out 
of the little noisy twittering street. It was as if a 
door slammed sharply behind them, noise died. Here 
was something sleeping, sequestered under a lilac sky. 

Bobbie Bouton said: 

“Sanctuary. The damned place is enchanted.” He 
looked at Angus, imps of mischief flickered in his 
bright blue eyes. “You know,” he said, “you’re risk¬ 
ing something.” 

“What?” 

“Your ready-made ideas, my friend.” 

Angus Reid said sharply: “Talk sense!” 

The place did not welcome him, it permitted him. 
He looked at the tall, lean, gracious houses, and their 


The House of Broken Dreams 29 

windows seemed curiously, hostilely blind, their stout 
doors implacable. They seemed to have stiffened all 
round him. The consciousness of hostility grew, it 
beat upon him, invisible and impalpable. 

He said: “You writing devils, you're always on 
the lookout for things, trying to squeeze artificiality 
out of life. Any place looks mysterious at this hour." 

Bobbie Bouton waved his arms. 

“It’ll mischief you," he prophesied. 

“What will?" 

Again he made that extravagant, comprehensive 
gesture. 

“Everything, my friend. This is where Marjorie 
Moneypenny dwindles until she is no bigger than an 
incident." 

Angus Reid said heartily: “You are an ass, you 
know." 

A breeze suddenly swooped down on the motionless 
magic of the garden in the middle of the square. It 
shook the leaves and set them crisping and whispering 
together. The air seemed suddenly quivering with 
restless conjecture, expectation. The tall houses stared 
across the agitated tree-tops coldly and disinterestedly. 
The tiny storm ceased. Suddenly the leaves quieted. 
Their sharp knock echoed through the new silence. 

Angus Reid said: “I think it’s a silly idea our 
changing places. After all, I’ve got to assert my 
authority sooner or later. I’m determined to. Why 
not now ?" 

“As you please," said Robert. 

The door opened. A little Punchinello of a man¬ 
servant stood there. A smile widened genially under; 


30 The House of Broken Dreams 

his hooked nose. He said in a snappy, friendly little 
voice, staring at Bobbie Bouton: 

“Mr. Reid, sir?” 

Bobbie Bouton glanced at his friend, then nodded. 

He took their bags, they passed with him into the 
massed shadows of the hall. 

“It is nearly dinner time,” said the little Punchinello. 
“Miss Fannie said she wished to see you as soon as 
you came. Will you go to your rooms first ?” 

“No,” said Bobbie, with another swift glance at 
his friend. 

“Then I will see to your luggage. Perhaps, sir, 
you will follow me.” 

Up the shadowy stairs. 

Angus touched his friend’s arm and whispered: 

“Look here! Bobbie, we’d better cut this business 
out.” 

A suddenly opened door and the voice of the 
Punchinello: 

“Mr. Angus Reid, Miss Fannie.” 

A long, long narrow room with a window at each 
end and twilight across them like lilac chiffon; more 
shadows humped and draped about the huge room, 
amethyst, violet, indigo shadows, the shadowy figure 
of a girl in a high-backed carved chair. She used the 
shadows as a veil, a screen, making herself in some 
queer way acquainted with them before she saw them. 

The Punchinello snapped lights on, more lights, and 
the shadows retreated like servitors whose task is done. 

She sat there watching them in the full glare of a 
dozen electric lights for a minute that seemed an hour, 


The House of Broken Dreams 31] 

throned in her big chair; something of the young 
queen there was about her, medieval, intensely aloof. 

They stood there staring like surprised tourists. 

She came towards them, and they saw that her hair 
was coarse and stood up from her head like burnished 
copper wire, that her eyes were grey and unfathom¬ 
able. She said, prosaically enough: 

“I am Fannie O’Rane. How do you do?” 

They stood there quite still, well-dressed, modern 
young men. She frowned a little and looked at Bobbie 
de Bouton. 

“Are you sure,” she demanded, “that all those ideas 
you've brought with you are all right, infallible?” 

The thought beguiled Bobbie immensely. He was 
delighted with it. That she should see his ideas ar¬ 
ranged behind him like a well-trained bodyguard, when 
he knew them for an everchanging caravansary, that 
existed merely to give colour and zest to the moment, 
amused him. 

Angus cut in: “Ideas are either right or wrong, 
Miss O’Rane, surely.” 

She looked at him sharply. He spoke very simply 
and his attractive brown eyes were really and genuinely 
puzzled. 

She said: “It must be wonderful to be like that, 
really like that. So simply.” 

Then the door blew open and a girl blew in just 
like a brown leaf; her hair, her eyes, her freckles, her 
frock were all brown. She was delicious. Her 
mouth seemed red as the crimson beads round her little 
brown neck. She held the knob of the door and stood 


32 


The House of Broken Dreams 

swaying on her toes. She was the most unself con¬ 
scious thing in the world. 

“Sorry, Fannie,” she said. “I came to tell you 
dinner was ready/* 

Fannie said: “Mr. de Bouton, my sister Kane.” 
Kane gave a slip of a hand and a slip of a smile 
to Angus. 

“And your guardian,” said Fannie. 

Kane gave Bobbie a queer, mischievous look. 

“Do you come in sorrow or in anger?” said Kane; 
and then half unwillingly, “you’re not what I expected.” 


Chapter II 


i 

/ T S HAT queer touch of baronial hall-ism was re- 
peated in the dining-room; like the drawing¬ 
room above, it ran the whole length of the house and 
had a window at each end. The velvet curtains were 
drawn in a rich ruby glow across the window that 
overlooked the square; ordinary candles in great silver 
sconces burnt on the beautiful refectory table, and 
gave off pinpoints of golden light that flickered on the 
brown panelled walls and the beautiful sideboard and 
lent to the whole picture a generous mellow gleam 
and warmth. It had an almost emotional dignity and 
solidity, it seemed to exude a rich and unctuous beni- 
son. It had no period, this dark brown room with its 
golden and mahogany and amber lights; its atmos¬ 
phere of gracious welcoming was not achieved by any 
conscious artistry, it was somewhat symbolical. 

“Look at Pip’s garden, Guardian,” said Kane’s light 
voice, “you don’t often see a garden like that in Lon¬ 
don!” 

The French windows at the other end of the room 
were open. Beyond it in the twilight lay an exquisite 
garden; the room made a frame for it, a dark frame 
for a fragile water-colour. The flowers glowed as if 
they were faintly phosphorescent. 

33 


34 The House of Broken Dreams 

'Tip’s hands are full of flower magic,” Fannie said. 
"They are his children.” 

The hostility had gone from her voice. Her eyes 
met Bobbie’s with an appeal he could not read. 

Kane was making Angus known in her high gay 
voice. 

"Mr. de Bouton. Miss Proctor.” 

A little thin woman with the shy, eager eyes of a 
child rose and bowed. 

"Mr. Piperton, Papa Pip.” 

A little fat man with a bald pink head of delicate hue 
with a silvery, weedy fringe of curly hair rose and 
bowed. 

"Mr. Cecil Cole, our Poet.” 

A little thin man with a soft, pointed, friendly little 
face with a pointed beard, like a sad little squirrel, 
acknowledged the introduction. 

"Mr. Kerr.” 

A young clergyman held out his hand with a nervous 
grip. 

"Mrs. Kerr.” 

A woman like a pale, drooping flower bowed and 
smiled. 

"Now you know everyone,” said Kane. 

Bobbie de Bouton, standing back and watching, saw 
the room not only as a frame for the garden, but for 
all these people. It had opened to let him and his friend 
into the picture. It had closed round them again. He 
turned and saw the Punchinello manservant guarding 
the door. He sensed Angus standing very erect and 
feeling for ordered ideas like a prudent man feels 
for his pockets in a crowd. 


The House of Broken Dreams 35 

Kane said to him in a low voice, as she dropped into 
a chair beside him: 

“Why are you smiling ?” 

“Because this is going to be the most tremendous 
fun.” 

She began to twitter biographies in his ear. 

“Old Pip, Papa Pip, he’s been with us longest of 
all. Daddy found him starving in Italy. He’d been 
a clown in a circus. Some days he’s crippled with 
rheumatism; look at his poor old hands. Every year 
he goes to Olympia and Barnet Fair, and sometimes he 
sees circus announcements in local papers and slips 
away. We always know. He comes back looking as 
if he’d said good-bye to his children. Once he turned 
a somersault for the children in the Square garden. It 
hurt him dreadfully, but they only thought he was 
drunk. I heard them shouting, and I looked out of the 
window and saw him creep away. It was dreadful. 
He doesn’t know anyone knows. He’s nearly always in 
pain and he’s nearly always laughing; but he can smell 
a circus; it’s in his blood and sometimes the longing 
gets so strong he has to creep away and find one.” 

“And the little woman opposite?” 

“Miss Proctor?” 

“She plays; she gives music lessons. Daddy found 
her in a home for decayed gentlewomen and rescued 
her because she wasn’t decayed enough, and she was 
suffering dreadfully. The matron hated her because 
she kept a real linen handkerchief to put under her 
head when she slept. They had pillow-cases like sail¬ 
cloth. She’s a queer little body. Her mother had 
beautiful linen. It stood for self-respect. The matron 


36 The House of Broken Dreams 

couldn’t understand that. It was something in her she 
couldn’t break, like the will of a child.” She paused 
and then added quite simply: “You see, the matron 
didn’t know Miss Proctor’s father had built the home 
before he went bankrupt and left them penniless.” 

“What does she do now?” 

“She practises hours,” said Kane. “And she’s taught 
us all to play anything at sight. You see, just before 
her father died and all their trouble came upon them 
he was going to give an audition for her. All her 
friends told her she would make a great name.” 

“And would she?” said Bobbie, staring at the little 
woman. 

“I don’t know,” answered Kane slowly. “I don’t 
know. She still has the dress she was going to wear. 
I think the audition was to be at the Egyptian Hall, 
some place that’s gone, anyway. It is such a quaint 
dress, Cambridge blue broche with waterfall sleeves. 
She believes if she could have a concert now she would 
achieve fame. She massages and exercises the mus¬ 
cles of her hands for hours. She’s always dreaming 
about it. Fannie and I always know when she is 
thinking about it. She looks so young and happy. 
Once she met a musical critic at a Lyons teashop. He 
sat at her table and they killed a wasp together. She 
made him promise over the body that he’d come to her 
recital if ever she gave one. She came home so ex¬ 
cited in a taxi, and then she forgot the taxi, and we 
thought it was waiting for the people next door and 
the beastly little clock thing ticked up over a pound 
before the taximan knocked us up,” she laughed. 

“And the little man who writes ?” 


The House of Broken Dreams 37 

“Oh, he’s written a book of poems, all about pink 
flamingoes flying against angry red skies, and black 
ducks winging home through black storms. All his 
skies and birds match, you’d think they were chame¬ 
leons. He’s tried every publisher in England and 
America, but they all want him to pay for publication. 
He thinks he’s only got to be printed to be acclaimed, 
that’s his dream. Pat reads Greek and Latin as if it 
were English. He reads poetry with Mr. Cole for 
two hours every morning.” 

“Mr. Cole could do other things.” 

“Oh no, he couldn’t. He looks well and ruddy, but 
he’s got the highest blood-pressure in London. It’s 
really wonderful. Specialists are always ringing him 
up and asking him if he’s dead and then they laugh. 
The telephone is in the hall. Some of the most expen¬ 
sive specialists have such funny laughs you can hear 
them right upstairs; it sounds like little shut-up dogs 
barking. He has to be very, very quiet and not get 
excited. He says he lives in the gloaming; but some¬ 
times he gets out of it and goes up to town. He’s 
welcome in every heart-specialist’s and blood-specialist’s 
house because he oughtn’t to be alive. They get dread¬ 
fully excited and affectionate, and get out little instru¬ 
ments and pop them about on him, and he registers 
all sorts of funny things no one ever registered before. 
As far as he can gather they can’t prove anything by 
him and this makes them quite emotional and they send 
him upstairs to have tea with their wives and see the 
children’s photographs. He has many pleasant after¬ 
noons like that.” 

Bobbie looked down the table and saw Angus talk- 


38 The House of Broken Dreams 

ing to Fannie. He looked at Kane. Like a brown 
leaf she had blown into his careless life, brown her 
frock, her eyes, her freckles, scarlet her beads, her fresh 
uptilted mouth. She was transient, the next puff of 
wind would carry her away again. His mind stilled 
lest she should stir and take flight. 

He said slowly: 

“I knew perfectly well this place was enchanted. ,, 

11 

After dinner they went to the drawing-room. 

Miss Proctor sat down at the piano, and thin, gay 
music began to trickle through the conversation; they 
spoke of flowers as if they were children, books as if 
they were comrades, great pictures as if they were 
personal possessions. 

Bobbie had a sudden absurd vision of this house 
held as a fortress against the world and the world going 
whirling and crashing by. 

Fannie excused herself and slipped away. 

“I wonder,” she said to Angus and Bobbie, “if you’d 
come to my den when you’ve had your coffee and a 
cigarette? It’s at the end of this passage, facing you.” 

In a second the curate’s wife had risen and followed 
her. 

Her husband held out his hand detainingly. His eyes 
questioned and hers evaded. Her pretty smile was an 
evasion, the little careless wave of her hand. 

“Must speak to Fannie, Philip,” she said with the 
urgency and impatience of a child, and was gone. 

She was too slight, too colourless. There were blue 


The House of Broken Dreams 39 

shadows beneath her blue eyes. Her transparency, 
her frailty, her listlessness were her chief characteris¬ 
tics, yet in moments of excitement her vitality burst 
through them, glowed like something warm encased in 
glass. 

She was like that when she reached Fannie O’Rane’s 
room, suddenly vivid, alive. She burst in like an ex¬ 
cited child. “I went back this afternoon, Fannie, to 
see the girls ! ,y 

She was unrecognizable as the pale, flower-like girl 
who had drooped at the dinner table. 

“Oh! Gladys!” said Fannie, and sat still staring out 
at the little garden. 

The girl Gladys stretched out her arms in a queer, 
theatrical little gesture. She stood there as if crucified, 
tawdry, a little pathetic. Life seemed to drain from 
her visibly; she was white and apathetic again. 

“Oh! you are a little fool!” said Fannie. 

Gladys crumpled down in a green armchair; she 
said: 

“I never asked to be a sort of Mrs. God. I wasn’t 
cut out that way.” 

Fannie O’Rane whirled round on her. 

“It isn’t the wicked people who cause the trouble and 
wrong and disillusionment in life, it’s the people who 
are just silly little fools like you. It’s not the people 
who want repressing, it’s the people who want protec¬ 
tion. If there was any sense in it I wouldn’t mind, 
Gladys, if it helped you at all or in any way. I know 
your life isn’t easy. . . 

“Easy!” said Gladys. “You don’t know anything 
about it. Do you know what time I got up this morn- 


40 The House of Broken Dreams 

ing, what we had for breakfast, what I did? Not 
you! When I’d finished I was filthy, so I boiled 
some water and had a bath, and when I’d finished 
it old Mrs. Curlew called and asked me to go and 
help her clean the church brass because her daugh¬ 
ter’s baby was going to be christened that afternoon 
and she didn’t like it dirty. Mr. Curlew is church¬ 
warden. I had to smile and go. She’d brought 
white sweet peas and daisies for the altar vases. 
She did them while I cleaned the brass. She said 
her daughter had read the little flowers of St. Francis 
or something and they were going to call the baby 
Francis. I said wasn’t he the dirty old man who tamed 
fleas and bugs and things? She said that people had 
complained the church brasses were not kept properly. 
She knows what the funds for the cleaning are. It’s 
not fair to talk like that. Then she said she thought 
Philip was young to be vicar. You know how Philip 
loves his church. Fannie, I was frightened. I offered 
to clean the lectern. I was cleaning that great bird at 
half-past two. When I went home Philip had had 
some bread and cheese and gone. It was awful in 
that house, everything wearing out and everything 
dirty, and the sun pouring in. Philip cleaned the 
windows at half-past four this morning. That seemed 
to let the sun in worse.” 

“Does Philip clean his own windows?” 

“We can’t afford four-and-six every month out of 
two hundred a year. Once old Miss Bassett saw him 
doing it late in the evening and she wrote him a horrid 
letter saying it offended his parishioners to see their 


The House of Broken Dreams 41 

vicar doing menial work, so now he has to get up early 
and do it.” 

Fannie said very gently: “But, my dear, how can 
it help you to go back?” 

“I saw the new models, Fannie, they were simply 
lovely; all the girls were awfully nice. I tried on some 
of the hats, they weren't busy and old Lemmon was 
doing the wholesale houses. Some of them did suit 
me. I could have had them trade price. I bought 
a little bunch of cowslips and I got some ideas for 
doing up my own rags. Oh! Fannie you can't under¬ 
stand how I love pretty things. All the years before 
Philip married me I was always touching them and 
thinking about them . . . and they were always 

there, and I could plan which I'd have. Sometimes 
it’s an ache ... an ache! Oh! you don’t under¬ 
stand! I know I’m petty, I know I’m little . . . 

but I wasn’t cut out to be Mrs. God. I saw old Stew¬ 
art to-day. He’s chief buyer now; and he’s got a little 
place at Bushey and a little car and a housekeeper, so 
the girls were telling me. He wanted to marry me 
before I met Philip.” 

“I can’t understand, Gladys! You love Philip.” 

“One of our girls married a shipping agent in a big 
way; and another married a doctor . . . and one 

day they came back, just to finger things and talk and 
make toast over the gas fire. They said it was hard 
to get out of some things, liking yourself best in black 
and linking arms. We asked them how they dressed 
their babies. That’s the sort of question you ask and 
that’s how your mind runs. Oh! you’re not a shop 
girl, you don’t understand! It’s lonely out of business, 


42 The House of Broken Dreams 

so lonely! You can’t ask anyone what they pay for 
things in private life; they don’t like it, but it’s all 
awfully interesting and exciting.” 

"I can’t see it.” 

“That’s just it, only those who’ve been in business 
know. Sometimes I ache! I have to pretend with 
Philip. He’s always expecting me to have wonderful 
thoughts, and how can I tell him they’re of hats and 
cami-knickers and things. If you could see your 
soul and keep it nice and buy it things I’d be interested 
in it, but how can you think a thing that is hidden mat¬ 
ters so frightfully? I wasn’t meant to be a poor clergy¬ 
man’s wife!” 

“No, but you might try. Philip believes in you so 
tremendously, reveres you so terrifically.” 

“I do try, I do try. Sometimes in church I try so 
hard to get near something that the palms of my hands 
get hot. I don’t want to let Philip down. I work like 
a charwoman. I try to make the parish like me. I 
try not to think that they’re a tiresome lot of old maids 
who like God because they think He’s a man. Some¬ 
times when I stare very hard at the stained glass win¬ 
dows I do get a feeling of being lighter and better 
. . . but I know its only the colour. I used to get 

just that feeling unpacking a box of French flowers. 
There was a wreath of purple velvet clematis once. 
I cried over it. Things like that affect me. I’m 
wicked, Fannie, that’s what I am.” 

“Not wicked, kid, only silly, but it doesn’t help you 
any, and it’s weakening.” 

Gladys only said: “I hope I never have a little 
girl.” 


The House of Broken Dreams 43 

“Why?” 

“Oh! just knowing how you could make her look 
and how she ought to look.” 

“Do you ever talk to Philip about the shop?” 

“Never. He thinks I’ve forgotten. I wasn't there 
so very long. I came up from Cornwall to be a gov¬ 
erness, but I left after three months and went into a 
shop. I never told my people about the shop. They'd 
have been shocked. I had to tell Philip. I met him 
at the house of a friend who thought I was still a 
governess. If I had told her she would have told my 
people. After I fell in love with Philip I went home 
and we were married from there.” 

“Why didn't you like being a governess?” 

“I think it was the daily walk; and then they were 
quite nice to me when we were alone, and when people 
came they treated me as if I'd suddenly gone dead and 
they were talking over my corpse. The housemaid was 
very fond of me. She used to send all my letters 
on to the shop before anyone got hold of them. My 
people wrote their last letter of congratulation there 
and Maggie sent it on to me. Philip wanted me to tell 
them I hadn’t been in the same post all the time, but 
it would only have hurt them. I never told. I wanted 
to be a mannequin, but I was too small and too thin. 
I would have loved that.” 

“Can't you get away from it, Gladys ?” 

Gladys said from the depths of her armchair: 

“Why should I? It’s the only thing that interests 
me. I mean ... a man . . . Oh! I can’t 

explain, but when a thing interests a man he makes a 
career of it. A woman . . . Oh! I can’t explain. 


44 The House of Broken Dreams 

Clothes are poetry to me. Ever since I was a little 
girl, you know, dressing up my dolls and all that. I 
was happy in business. I loved to handle things, to 
see how beautiful they were. At night . . . when 

they weren’t letting any more customers in I used to 
go through and see the stuff hanging like banners, like 
fairyland. Some of the things were so dainty . . . 

the little boudoir caps and negligees. To be well 
dressed, that seems to me ... I can’t explain. 
It isn’t envy exactly. I can’t explain. Even in church 
when Philip’s preaching ... a hat’ll wipe it all 
out if I like that hat. It’s awful. Oh! I know. I try 
to cure it, I keep away from shops. Only sometimes, 
like this afternoon, you feel, you feel . . . Oh! I 

don’t know!” 

Fannie said, troubled: “Oh, my dear, I know, but 
you’ve got to fight it. There’s all your life.” 

There was a knock at the door. 

Fannie called, “Come in.” 

Angus Reid and Robert de Bouton entered. 

Gladys Kerr said: “I’ll go back to Philip and the 
others,” and slipped away. 

But Philip Kerr was in the garden with Papa Pip 
and Coles the poet; and only Kane and Judy sat in 
the twilight drawing-room listening to Miss Proctor’s 
playing. 

Gladys sat down by Kane and shut her eyes. She 
was very white and inert, more the drooping flower 
than ever. 

Miss Proctor’s music poured over them in quiet, 
limpid waves. 

After quite a long interval Kane found that Gladys 


The House of Broken Dreams 45 

Kerr had come alive. She was whispering to her, 
smiling like a child. 

“Kane, Miss Elder was turning out a lot of old 
things for the rummage sale the other day and there 
was an old grey flowered silk, just what they’re wear¬ 
ing now, you know, little faint bunches of flowers all 
over it. I asked her to give it to me.” 

Judy bent forward. Gladys swept her into a sud¬ 
denly gay and sparkling discussion. She was so pretty, 
so eager, like a child with a prize. 

“My dear! it’s lovely stuff. It would make a darling 
little frock and there’s enough in the skirt to make a 
little cape thing. Of course one’ll have to cut care¬ 
fully.” 

“Has Fannie seen it?” Judy said. 

“No. No, I thought I’d make it up as a surprise. 
I brought it with me. It’s upstairs. I thought per¬ 
haps . . 

“Let’s go and see it,” humoured Judy. 

“I’ve got some mauve shot silk I never had made 
up,” said Kane. “Perhaps, if it matched, it might line 
the cape.” 

Gladys linked her arms in theirs; they were suddenly 
a trio of schoolgirls, gay, happy, anticipating. 

Miss Proctor’s music flowed over an empty room. 

hi 

“Won’t you smoke?” said Fannie gravely. “We 
have a lot to talk about.” 

She had not moved. She sat with her back to the 
wide open window and the upraised mesh of her wiry 


46 The House of Broken Dreams 

hair made a cloudy coronet for her. She turned on no 
lights. She said: 

“I want us to understand each other,” and sat think- 
ing. 

Her repose was as startling as a foreign gesture, it 
invested her with extraordinary dignity. All around 
her was a tranquillity and peace that the two young 
men had not known in the noisy hotel by which traffic 
crashed at alt hours. 

“I would have refused you admittance,” she submit¬ 
ted quietly, “but I preferred to let you into our lives. 
It seemed to me the only way. We were reared as 
sentimentalists. We are living the lives of sentimen¬ 
talists.” 

“Sentiment is often an excuse to ignore the facts of 
life, Miss O’Rane,” said Angus. 

She inquired with a queer little smile what were the 
facts of life. Angus stiffened instantly. 

“Frankly I don’t see that a discussion of the abstract 
is going to help either of us, Miss O’Rane. I put my 
cards on the table. I am an average man. I leave 
romance and sentiment to novelists and women. There 
are enough of both in the world to keep it going. I 
am concerned with concrete things. Had your father 
felt happy in his mind about your future and died as¬ 
sured that he had left everything arranged for you 
he would never have nominated me your guardian and 
trustee, he would never have seen the slightest neces¬ 
sity for one.” 

“You!” said Fannie. “I understood you were Mr. de 
Bouton!” 

Angus said: “I wasn’t sure what was the spirit in 


The House of Broken Dreams 47 

which we would be received. We decided to change 
identity for the moment as a means of protection. 
Briefly, I wanted to spy out the land and I didn’t want 
all the family’s attention concentrated on me. I thought 
you would be suspicious and self-conscious. I had no 
intention of keeping up the deception after I found 
out how the land lay. I am Angus Reid and that is my 
friend Robert de Bouton. Am I clear?” 

“Quite,” said Fannie. “It wasn’t a bad idea. As 
far as the others are concerned I should keep it up a 
little longer: it will leave you freer, enable you to get 
a better perspective of everything. Kane and Judy and 
Pat, they’ll talk to you more frankly if they don’t think 
it’s so vital to impress you and convert you. You’ve 
been sprung on us, Mr. Reid, a bolt from the blue; 
and we’re frightened for ourselves and for others.” 

He said: “Miss O’Rane, you’re living a fairy-tale 
and you’ve got to wake up.” 

She said: “I felt you’d say that. Mr. de Bouton, 
won’t you smoke ?” 

“There isn’t a community in London like this one.” 

“Does it make it wrong?” she countered. 

“That’s not the point. You see me as an enemy. I 
see you as a duty laid upon me by a dead man. I have 
never shirked duty. I am going to see this thing 
through.” 

“But how? But how?” 

“By applying common sense.” 

“You terrify me,” she said. She was perfectly 
honest and spoke without a trace of humour. 

“It pays these people gathered here to humour you, 
as they humoured your father, with the belief that life 


48 The House of Broken Dreams 

is a sort of fairy-tale. One supposes (if you will for¬ 
give me) that it pleased your father’s natural vanity to 
pose as a benefactor, to feel that he had cornered off 
a little bit of the world and made it heaven for a little 
crowd of derelicts. I say that he was criminally im¬ 
posed on and that you are being imposed on. I can 
see it.” 

She said: “You can’t! You can’t !” and struck her 
small hands together in the darkness. 

“My dear young lady!” he objected, “I can! 

That quieted her. Up to then she had appealed to 
him for help and understanding without realizing his 
foreignness. Now he answered her in an alien tongue 
and she realized that nothing she had said yet had 
reached him. It steadied her, so did his next remark. 

“What chance have your sisters and brother got 
reared in this fantastic atmosphere?” 

She said: “They don’t lack anything but prejudices, 
Mr. Reid.” 

From his dark corner Robert de Bouton spoke a little 
sadly. 

“Miss O’Rane, you can’t get anywhere without 
them in the world, not anywhere.” 

He lit a cigarette, the match flared in his square 
brown face with its puggy, blunt-ended little nose and 
brilliant, twinkling blue eyes. 

Fannie O’Rane said in a whisper, “Oh! Mr. Reid, 
what are you going to do ? What are you going to do ? 
All our money goes to keep up this place . . . 

mine and Kane’s and Judy’s and Patrick’s.” 

“Do you think that’s fair or just?” 

“They are content.” 


The House of Broken Dreams 49 

“They are too young, too ignorant to be anything 
else. You have no right to keep them in this back- 
water.” 

“They are happy,” she defended. 

“Because they don’t know normal life, that’s why. 
They’re the sacrifices to sentimentality, but they don’t 
know it.” 

“You hit hard.” 

“I’ve got to,” he submitted curtly. 

“But you’re judging us without knowing us.” 

“My judgment is the judgment of the average man, 
Miss O’Rane,” he assured her. 

He was a little angry, also a little ill at ease. The 
quietness, the twilight. He felt somehow that she 
had the advantage of him sitting there and feeling 
him with her mind. He felt as if he were being 
asked to live in a book or a play and behave that way. 

“Look at it baldly and coldly and crudely,” he im¬ 
plored her curtly. “Your father was not like other 
men.” 

“I admit it,” she acquiesced instantly. She seemed 
to run a flag up in the darkness and stand beneath it. 
In some queer way it gave her a vantage-point over 
him. 

“He was a sentimentalist,” Reid went on, “an ideal¬ 
ist. In the old days he would have been a Crusader. 
He was a fantastic and charming person who refused 
to conform to conventional standards. He adored his 
wife. When she died it became increasingly difficult 
for him to face reality and life as it was. It jarred 
him, it hurt him, it depressed him. I imagine that 


50 The House of Broken Dreams 

during her life she stood between him and the outer 
world. She took the place of his mother.’* 

“Father wouldn’t have hurt a fly, Mr. Reid.” 

“Exactly! Not out of consideration for the fly, 
Miss O’Rane, but out of consideration for himself. 
You illustrate his whole attitude to life.” 

“I do not think it needs defending.” 

“I am analysing it, Miss O’Rane. I want you to 
see how and why it moulded your lives in the peculiar 
way it has; and why it is necessary that you should 
. . . wake up to reality. The training of the next 

few years is vital to Judy and Pat. It is essential 
that they should get a normal, everyday point of view 
because they will have to live in a normal everyday 
world, earn money in it, marry in it.” 

“You think that Papa Pip and Miss Proctor and 
Mr. Cole are just clever pauper impostors who could 
earn their living if they tried?” 

“Undoubtedly, Miss O’Rane. There is no doubt 
about it. I know that you have nothing but contempt 
and dislike for my point of view, but I ask you to try 
and look at it squarely for a few minutes. The dis¬ 
cipline of work is good for people. There is nothing in 
the world so undisciplined or so immoral in its effect 
as uncontrolled charity and sentimentalism. It makes 
parasites and paupers and wastrels at every step. All 
these people in this house are parasites created by 
your father. That’s the long and short of it. He took 
out their backbone and removed their usefulness. He 
offered them security in order to secure his own mental 
security . . . that’s what it amounts to. Let us 

understand each other. I am not going to let them 


The House of Broken Dreams 51 

batten on those youngsters. That’s what they’re do¬ 
ing . . . eating into their inheritance. I went 

into accounts with your father’s solicitor, Barton. It 
takes your united incomes to run this hostel for these 
old people. Your father’s debts have already made a 
hole in this year’s dividends. To keep these pensioners 
you are not only mortgaging your future, but you are 
deliberately sacrificing those youngsters and denying 
them the equipment that is absolutely necessary for 
life. It isn’t right. It isn’t honest. It isn’t reason¬ 
able. You are sacrificing youth to age, your own kith 
and kin for strangers who have nothing but a slight 
sentimental claim on you. I tell you quite candidly, 
I am not going to stand for it. I regard it as crim¬ 
inal.” 

He was hot, aggressive, priggish. Bobbie, who 
knew him, could have hit him, he was so angry with 
Reid for obliterating the other side of himself so com¬ 
pletely and devastatingly. He was smug! smug! smug! 
He saw a wilderness between these two where there 
might have been paths of understanding. 

She said: “Kane will be twenty-one next year, and 
then . . .” 

“You mean that you and she will carry on? Miss 
O’Rane, don’t let your feelings run away entirely 
with your common sense. Already your house, your 
domestic arrangements are eating into your combined 
capital. In a few years it will have entirely absorbed 
the portion of the inheritance which is yours and Miss 
Kane’s. Your pensioners will be older, more helpless, 
more dependent than they are to-day, and you will be 
forced to abandon them.” 


52 


The House of Broken Dreams 


‘Why?” 

“Economic necessity. You cannot run any form of 
charity on credit.” 

She said: “You’re perfectly beastly ... in¬ 
human. . . . Your belief in human nature is 

jaundiced. Of course you’ve got legal power. Father 
would have hated you if he’d known you . . . 

vou’re narrow, you’re little, you’re insular. You judge 
without knowing ... a beastly little British tin 
god. I ... I hate you.” 

He was awfully quiet, almost impersonal. As her 
temper quickened, his cooled; as she let go, he tight¬ 
ened. They were like people at two ends of a see¬ 
saw. She was up in the air continually. He was on 
the ground level. 

“I am sorry for all this. Of course I foresaw it. 
I am quite prepared to sacrifice your good opinion for 
my own. Judy and Pat are dependent on me. I don’t 
let my dependents down.” 

“No, but you force me to let mine down.” 

“That is where we utterly disagree. They are not 
your dependents.” 

She grew dreadfully quiet then with a controlled 
forced tranquillity that he knew had whitened her 
face. 

“I am making an enemy of you,” she said; “that is 
fatal. I have an Irish temper. History has proved 
that fatal. I want to explain my attitude. I have to 
explain it. I was father’s mother. I am a mother to 
all these people who are so much older than I. You 
threaten my . . . my motherhood, and all that 

is protective in me rises up. They are all children. 


The House of Broken Dreams 53 

Oh! I feel I’m not getting near you! I feel it! There’s 
a wall! What can I do to break it down? To keep 
them happy, smiling, believing, hoping . . . that 

has been my work ever since I can remember. In this 
house, Mr. Reid, abide peace and comradeship and 
charity such as you have never known. We are simple 
here and we are good. We live in love for each other. 
Oh! you are laughing!” 

“I am not laughing,” said Angus. “I am trying with 
an adult mind to understand a fairy-tale.” 

“You say you don’t understand,” she caught him 
up. “Won’t you defer action until you do . . . 

until you know positively that we are wrong and you 
are right?” 

“I do not see how that can be,” he murmured. 

“You pride yourself on being fair and just,” she 
argued. “Won’t you give us a chance? Give us a 
month’s test. Live amongst us and see how we live. 
Judy and Pat could not go to school till September 
anyway. There wouldn’t be anything lost. You could 
get to know Pat and Judy and Kane and discover what 
they are best suited for. It wouldn’t be wasted time. 
You could use this place as an hotel, coming and 
going; but we should be living our normal, everyday 
lives. It isn’t much to ask; just a month. If at the 
end of that time you see things as you see them now, 
I won’t stand out against you. I’ll give in. Surely 
that’s fair?” 

“I can’t see what’s gained by it, Miss O’Rane. The 
financial aspect will be what it is now.” 

“But you may see other aspects.” 

“I think not.” 


54 The House of Broken Dreams 

“But you cannot know. Keep your friend’s name 
and watch us, study us, criticize us. It is of your 
friend Kane and Judy and Pat will be suspicious, not 
you. Change places for a month and watch us. A 
month is such a little while. I beg you to do this 
thing.” 

“You make it very difficult for me, Miss O’Rane; 
it is merely delaying inevitable action.” 

Robert de Bouton said slowly: 

“It’s sporting, Angus. I don’t see how you can 
refuse. You lose nothing.” 

“I promise, whatever I feel, not to stand in the way 
of any arrangements you make with regard to Kane, 
Judy and Pat; not to influence them. I undertake to 
stand in with you. I can’t say more. Let them go on 
thinking you are Robert de Bouton and your friend 
is Angus Reid. They are not self-conscious; they will 
have no reserve. If you act now you will act blindly, 
but if you act then you will act with knowledge.” 

“I don’t see what else we can do, old boy.” 

Angus Reid said stiffly: 

“Very well, Miss O’Rane, I agree, but I warn you 
that at the end of a month I shall feel as I feel to-night 
and act accordingly. It is a respite.” 

“I am playing fair,” she said. “If my sisters try 
to influence you at all it will be your friend who will 
get the benefit of it. You will merely watch us living 
as we have lived for years.” 

IV 

Later in his room Angus wrote to Marjorie Money- 
penny: “They are an incredible crowd. The girl 


The House of Broken Dreams 55 

O’Rane is one of these frightfully emotional people, I 
should imagine. Bobbie and I had a long seance with 
her this evening in which she tried to explain her point 
of view. I explained why Bobbie and I had changed 
names and the reason for it, and she begged us to con¬ 
tinue the deception in order that I should get to know 
the family better. I have agreed to mark time for a 
month and observe the land. I am quite sure my ob¬ 
servation will merely confirm my present point of view 
with regard to it all. They are all handsome in a wild 
way, and there is no actual harm in the old people 
they have taken under their wing; they seem a happy 
but wildly unpractical crowd—a rather spacious and 
pleasant lunatic asylum, in fact. I hope your mother 
got some maids. I met a clergyman here to-night. 
Shall I ask him? It’s the sort of parish that might 
produce maids.” 

There was a knock at the door and Papa Pip entered. 

“I wondered,” he said, “if you had everything you 
wanted ?” 

“Everything, thank you,” said Angus. 

The old man walked to the open window and stood 
looking down at the garden. 

“You haven’t everything or you wouldn’t be here,” 
he said gently. “People who’ve everything don’t come 
here.” 

“What sort of people do come here ?” asked Angus. 

“People who want refitting,” said Papa Pip. 

“And Miss Fannie fits them and sends them on their 
way again.” 

“Clothes, food and money, I suppose?” said Angus 
curtly. 


$6 The House of Broken Dreams 

“Not always,” said Papa Pip; “sometimes they've 
lost their courage and their hope. Have you ever 
realized what a lot of people wear out and want re¬ 
fitting?” 

“No,” said Angus curtly. 

“They sit in my garden,” said Papa Pip, “and some¬ 
times it comes back to them there . . . the thing 

they’ve lost. This is a house for tired hearts and broken 
dreams. Miss Fannie patches them up.” 

“Do they pay?” said Angus. 

“Sometimes they pay if they can, sometimes they 
work, mend and help in the garden.” 

“I see,” said Angus. 

Papa Pip shook his head. 

“You listen; but you don’t see,” he contradicted 
gently. “One day you will see. Miss Fannie is a great 
woman. If you’ve everything you want perhaps I’d 
better go. We don’t have many people like that here. 
Do you like circuses?” 

“I used to when I was a boy.” 

“You are only a boy now.” He peered at Angus 
gently as a father might have done. “I don’t know,” 
he said, “I don’t think you ever were a boy. Perhaps 
that is what you have come here to find . . . your 

youth.” 


Chapter III 


i 

T OVE had made Bobbie de Bouton an ally. He 

4 suspected that within twenty-four hours of his 
meeting with Kane O’Rane; before another twenty- 
four hours he knew it. 

Fannie O’Rane felt it too, although she did not 
sense its cause. 

She kept him a minute in the sunny breakfast-room 
after the others had gone and searched his face with 
anxious eyes. 

Through the window they could see Papa Pip busy 
in his garden; the thin music of Miss Proctor practis¬ 
ing floated down to them; the little poet had gone to 
his room to write an ode to Spring. 

They had all scattered happily, rather like busy birds; 
somehow they met like birds who have travelled far, 
builded much, and have tales to tell. There was a 
gay eagnerness about their reunion three times a day, 
there was laughter, happiness, gaiety in the sun-dappled 
room. There was an extraordinary air of things doing 
and stirring. 

“Have we a chance?” Fannie O’Rane said. “He 
doesn’t see, Mr. de Bouton, he just doesn’t see. He 
sits there like someone who doesn’t understand our 
language . . . with his mind tight, tight in a 

57 


58 The House of Broken Dreams 

little round hard knob. I’m not sleeping. It kills me 
to think of them in a month perhaps being turned out, 
homeless. I see the trust in their old eyes. I hate 
him! I hate him! I hate him for his smugness and 
his priggishness, for the conventionality and cruelty 
of it all. How can we reach him. He has no heart or 
soul. ,, 

“You’re wrong,” said Robert de Bouton quietly. 
“I’ve known Reid since he was a kid. All his life 
he’s had to manage things, to make decisions, to act 
for other people. He’s had a long, narrow road to 
travel for other people and he’s travelled it steadily 
and successfully and honestly and damned unselfishly, 
stifling the desire to look to right or left so that it has 
become a habit to look only ahead at the ultimate 
issue. He’s a sacrifice on the altar of duty. He’s had 
no youth, he’s had no fun. He’s white all through 
and I’ve watched him make big sacrifices quietly and 
simply. He had to take a road mentally almost before 
he knew he’d got a brain, and he’s slogged along it for 
the benefit of the greater number. His father left 
the estate terribly involved and practically penniless. 
Angus has put all that right. He had cohorts of jab¬ 
bering female relatives who depend on him. He’s had 
all the ghastly responsibility of domesticity without its 
fun or compensations.” His honest brown face was 
grave. “Angus Reid is fine, Miss O’Rane, but he’s 
never learnt to be romantic or sentimental.” 

“You’ll do what you can? You see he has absolute 
power. If he denies us the money we simply cannot 
carry on here. You’ve seen Papa Pip and Miss Proc¬ 
tor and little Mr. Cole . . . there’s nothing for 


The House of Broken Dreams 59 

them but the workhouse. Oh! it’s unthinkable. Papa 
Pip would die without his garden. They’re so happy. 
They do no harm. They do so much good. Oh! we 
must break something down and show him! Make 
him see!” 

Her little heart-shaped face was deathly white, her 
eyes were dark with pain. 

“It hasn’t been easy for me,” she said. “The only 
grown-up among children. I’m lonely as a queen. 
I’ve been lonely all my life. Long, long ago I learnt 
that if you are to be the head, the directing force, 
of anything you must live withdrawn from those you 
direct, you mustn’t be familiar or you lose authority 
and they lose their belief in you. I never had a play¬ 
time either, but it hasn’t made me hard and narrow 
and hidebound like your friend. Even with Kane and 
Judy I had to be . . . up there. I daren’t come 

down to their level, I daren’t go shares in life with 
them or they wouldn’t have heeded me when I forbade 
things, as I have had to sometimes. Lonely hours I 
spend in that study just to create the necessary atmos¬ 
phere. Daddy loathed responsibility; before I was 
twelve I had learnt to quell familiarity in servants, to 
hold myself apart. I have even learnt to be stately, to 
be grave and judicial. I wasn’t born like that. I have 
never taken parts! I am the judge in this house, the 
final note in everything.” 

“It seems to me that you and Angus Reid are so 
alike.” 

“Alike! My goodness!” 

“Perhaps that’s why you dislike him so. You’ve both 
been at the head and now strive for mastery over each 


60 The House of Broken Dreams 

other. Two monarchs who cannot brook insubordina¬ 
tion.” 

Her troubled mind was pliant; he could feel it bend 
to catch his new ideas, but when she and Angus Reid 
talked together it was like two ramrods, two absurd 
ramrods so alike and so ununitable in the stiffness of 
their pride and arrogance. 

He thought her very beautiful with her strange, 
intense eyes and her stivery, coppery hair. A little 
creature of mood and temperament bravely schooled 
and held in check. There was something pathetic in 
her self-restraint, as if she were a warm little fire shut 
away behind ice. 

“I shall always loathe him,” she said, “always. A 
petty, bricked-in mind—that’s what he’s got. He’s a 
tyrant, a suburban tyrant.” 

The door opened and Angus Reid came in. 

He came in charmingly, unself-consciously, the 
brown face animated, the brown eyes sparkling. 
He looked extraordinarily handsome and attractive. He 
caught sight of Fannie O’Rane. He stiffened. 
He became arrogant. 

Bobbie Bouton looked from his friend to Fannie. 
They had both changed. He knew neither of them. 

He patted the white tablecloth nervously; his jolly, 
snub-featured brown face was perturbed. 

“Look here,” he said, “you’re both here, so it 
wouldn’t be a bad opportunity ... I want to tell 
Miss Kane O’Rane I’m not Angus Reid. It makes it 
jolly awkward in lots of ways. As far as the others 
are concerned it doesn’t matter. What? Well, what?” 


The House of Broken Dreams 61 

His brilliant blue eyes twinkled from one to the 
other. 

“I don’t see that it makes any difference,” said 
Fannie. Her smile was utterly charming, it rooted in 
her clear eyes and spread till it flowered in her dimples. 

‘‘I see no reason to alter the original arrangement or 
make any exception with regard to Miss Kane,” said 
Angus Reid. 

“It puts me at a disadvantage.” 

“Naturally,” said Fannie. 

“I fail to see it,” said Angus. 

Bobbie’s attractive grin became more nervous and 
more pronounced. 

“As a matter of fact I’m afraid I shall have to. 
I am going to a circus this afternoon with Miss Kane 
and Papa Pip. I don’t feel Angus Reid would enjoy 
it at all, but it is exactly the thing for a simple, un¬ 
sophisticated little chap like Bobbie Bouton.” 

“You mean you’re going to tell her?” said Angus. 

“Well, yes, that was rather the idea, in fact quite 
the idea,” he paused. “I think it was rather a silly 
idea changing names, anyway.” 

“I think the circus is an absurd idea.” 

“I think it is a topping one,” said Bobbie and escaped 
thankfully. 

And Fannie suddenly boiled over. 

“Weren’t you ever young and jolly?” she demanded 
of Angus. 

He looked at her as if she were a tiresome little 
child. 

“Exactly why?” 


62 The House of Broken Dreams 

“Oh! you throw cold water on everything and every¬ 
body . . . nasty, elderly cold water.” 

“I am sorry that is your opinion.” 

She clasped her hands. 

“There, I’ve done it again! There’s something in 
me makes me just . . . just spit out. Please, 
please forget it!” 

“Certainly. It made no impression.” 

“We shall drive you away.” 

“I am afraid not, Miss O’Rane. I agreed to stay 
a month and I am going to stay that month. It is my 
habit to keep my word.” 


ii 

They came out into the sun-flooded field; rooks 
cawed in the great elms that plumed it on two sides; 
beside them, as if dispersed by a giant hand pushing, 
surged waves of hot, chattering children. 

Kane said: “Dear old Papa Pip; he’ll stay and help 
feed the animals and gossip on the steps of the cara¬ 
vans. Wasn’t it wonderful to see him. Like someone 
come home after years of exile. He didn’t know we 
were there even. To gain happiness so cheaply. It 
makes me feel humble. I want such a lot.” 

He said: “You deserve a lot.” 

She said: “Oh, no! Fannie does. Fannie is won¬ 
derful. Everything—all the happiness and the peace 
and the comfort in tjie house and the things we’ve learnt 
come from Fannie. She’s up there. Of course you 
don’t know her ... no one quite knows her, 
being up there.” 


The House of Broken Dreams 63 

He said: ‘‘I don’t want to talk about Miss O’Rane. 
If I were an artist I’d want to paint her, but I don’t 
want to talk about her, Miss Kane. I want to talk 
about you. I’ve never wanted to talk about anything 
so much.” 

He was desperately in earnest; his knubbly little 
brown face, with its fierce, jutting chin, its stubby 
features, was solemn as a judge; even his vivid eyes 
had lost their droll twinkle, they were blue as stones 
set in copper. He said: 

“What would you do if someone made you a present 
of the world suddenly?” 

“I’d be terribly embarrassed. I’d want to run away 
from it.” 

“You couldn’t,” he said. “You couldn’t even wrap 
it up and take it away, it would just be there.” 

“The ideas you have!” she said. 

She was delicious, there in the dusty country road 
with the powdery white cow-parsley like lace on either 
side of her, with the dark shimmer of leaves above 
her. She was a gipsy dryad with the kiss of the wind 
and the sun on her little neck and her little brown 
face. 

He said: 

“Make a gift to me, Miss Kane. This wonderful 
evening, as a memory.” 

“You mean?” 

“Spend it with me. Let’s walk through it until we 
find a little inn where they’ll leave the stars in the trees 
to light a little dinner-table in the garden. I am stuck 
fast in enchantment. Don’t unstick my feet and tell 
me to follow the tramlines home. I couldn’t bear it.” 


64 The House of Broken Dreams 

There was solemnity behind his whimsies. The 
laughter and carelessness died in her brown eyes. 

“I don't know. . . she said. “There s Fan- 

• ft 

me. . . . 

The sun washed up the empty road and down the 
empty road. They had stopped under a great elm. 
It made a great grey shadow wing at their feet; through 
it the sun chinked like scattered nuggets. He saw 
questions grow in her clear young eyes, questions that 
lived and died like things that have no stems or roots. 

“I ought not to,” she said. 

“We shall be home by ten. When one is nineteen 
they shut up fairyland at ten.” 

“But you are twenty-five.” 

“I think—I am almost sure—they will give me a 
bit to take home.” 

“What will you do with it?” 

“Madam, I shall savour it exceedingly and guard it 
with my life.” 

She laughed, her womanhood jumped down, her 
childishness leaped up, frolicked in her eyes, her voice, 
even her impatient little feet stirring in that wing of 
grey shadow. 

“It would be great sport,” she said. 

He made her climb the bank and look over the hedge ; 
she saw the hot translucent shimmer of green cornfields, 
the vivid stain of poppies here and there and the warm 
rust of sorrel. Far beyond the smoke of village fires 
went up into the quiet blue of the evening sky, and with 
no breeze stirring, made a gate on the horizon. The 
gate of fairyland he called it, and said by ten they 
must be the other side. 


The House of Broken Dreams 65 

“I know what lies the other side/’ she said; “but 
what lies this?” 

“I do not know,” he told her; “I am a tourist here 
for the first time.” 

As they walked they talked, and as they talked the 
sun died and left the world pink and flushed like the 
inside of a sea-shell. 

She said: “I am glad you’re not my guardian but my 
friend. I can’t talk to Judy, she’s too young, and Pat’s 
too prejudiced; and Fannie’s too far off. One can’t; 
she’s always calm and kind and balanced, one doesn’t 
know what lies underneath. I’ve never seen her in a 
temper, or unjust, or very excited. She’s like that. I 
can’t talk to Papa Pip and Miss Proctor or Mr. Cole 
—they’re different; so much younger than I am.” 

“Talk to me.” 

“I’m frightened—horribly frightened. You can feel 
how they hate each other . . . Fannie and your 

friend Angus Reid. . . . He’ll turn them all out 

at the end of the month—Papa Pip and Mr. Cole. 
They’re like two cats. I never thought Fannie was 
like that. She could murder him. They haven’t an idea 
in common. They’d like to down each other.” 

“And they each think they’re absolutely right.” 

“I think Fannie will kill Mr. Reid if he carries it 
out.” 

“They’re not so unlike, your sister and my friend.” 

“How can you say a thing like that ?” 

“There’s the sentimental side of Angus. He’s con¬ 
scious of it or he wouldn’t repress it so violently. One 
day it’ll come bursting out. I’ve always told him so. 
Not being used to liberty it will go mad for a little 


(66 The House of Broken Dreams 

while. It’s dangerous because it’s pent up. There's 
the practical, logical, materialistic side of your sister. 
It must be there, or she couldn't run the house as she 
does. She suppresses that, she has to, even more than 
Angus has to suppress the romantic and sentimental 
side of his nature, because if she let it free she couldn't 
go on. They antagonize each other so frightfully be¬ 
cause they attack the sides of the nature they keep 
down and ignore as far as possible." 

She said very simply: 

“You’re very clever, aren't you? You see things. 
Mr. Reid. ... (I shall have to get used to calling 
you Mr. de Bouton when we're alone) Mr. Reid says 
you'll write a great book one day. He says the critics 
say you have done so." 

“I never wanted to so much as I want to at this 
minute." 

They were so young, the world was so young, and 
young stars roofed them in, twinkled at them through 
the branches. They moved off the high road; a dear 
little mysterious wood shut them in like a secret house, 
only the rustle of their feet in last year's leaves broke 
the stillness that seemed like a benison. 

“You're on our side,” she said. 

He said: “I know. I’ve got to go away, you know. 
It wouldn't be fair on Angus. I was non-partisan. 
Now I am in armour. I carry the colours of the 
house of O'Rane. I've got to go away. It wouldn't 
be fair on old Angus. I've gone over to the other side. 
I shall hate to go away. I shall hate to leave the 
fight, but I can't fight against my friend. I entered 
the enemy’s country as his bodyguard." 


The House of Broken Dreams 67 

He saw the oval of her little face, the darkness where 
here eyes shone. He said again: 

“I shall hate to go away, Miss Kane, but it’s the 
only thing to do. I can’t take open sides against my 
friend.” 

She said, “No, of course not.” 

They found a brook. By day it was a common 
domestic little thing, chattering over old sardine cans 
and jam pots, but by night it was a thing of silver 
mystery, one visioned it running glinting and glisten¬ 
ing and murmuring wistfully to the wideness and ob¬ 
livion of the sea, not resting finally and ignobly in a 
soak-away full of rank watercress and rubbish. 

Bobbie found a seat for her, a natural armchair out 
of the stump of a tree. 

“Best ivy brocade,” he said, “made before the war. 
Won’t you try it, madam?” 

She was awfully quiet, listening to the little chat¬ 
tering brook, her hands clasped round her knee. 

“Mr. Angus Reid will stay,” she said at last. 

“He has promised your sister to stay till the end of 
the month and take no action.” 

“What will he say when you go?” 

“It’ll seem like desertion.” 

“And it’ll only make him more determined and pig¬ 
headed.” 

“I’m afraid so.” 

“Oh, dear!—it’ll work against us.” 

“I'm afraid it will.” 

“Need you go?” she said. “Need you go? Can’t 
you stay on and be neutral?” 

“I'm not neutral any more. It wouldn’t be honest. 


68 The House of Broken Dreams 

It wouldn’t be straight. I’d be acting a part. I couldn’t 
do that and carry the O’Rane colours as I mean to 
carry them. I’ve been friends with Reid all my life. 

I admire him. He’s white, he’s sterling, but I’ve 
formed a new allegiance and I’ve got to tell him. I’ll 
hate like hell to do it. We’ve been through things 
together, the same school, the same battalion . . . 

everything. He’s been more than a brother. We’ve 
never seen eye to eye, but it’s been a sort of bond not 
to, an amusement, a diversion, until this. I shall tell 
him when I get back to-night.” 

“So soon?” 

“The sooner the better. Almost as soon as I came 
into the house I broke away from him. I see that 
now.” 

“He’ll be so angry and hurt; and a man like that 
—it’ll please his vanity to carry on in what he con¬ 
siders the right path with the world and his best friend 
against him. He’s keen on what he calls his ‘duty/ 
Do you really feel you must tell him ? It’ll strengthen 
his hand so.” 

“I’m afraid so.” 

“What made you take the O’Rane colours?” 

“One day I’d like to tell you.” 

She sprung to her feet then. She said in a quick, 
hurrying voice: 

“We must get on.” 

A breeze rose with her and rushed along beside them 
through the wood. It had broken into their privacy. 
They seemed companioned by it and no longer alone; 
but at the edge of the wood it left them and they heard 
it fluttering back. They walked between hedges again. 


The House of Broken Dreams 69 

The stars above them seemed brighter and more curi¬ 
ous than the quiet eyes that had glimmered at them 
through the leaves of the little wood. A moon shone 
in the primrose sky, pale and new. 

“I wish you weren’t so young,” he said; “so dread¬ 
fully, beautifully, wonderfully young.” 

She did not ask him why. She just said, “I don’t 
feel so young,” in a quiet, sober little voice. 

She was frightened by her unfamiliarity to herself. 
She seemed to be standing listening, waiting, watch¬ 
ing for something that did not come, but only raised 
a queer, delicious little shiver of expectation that was 
half fear. She had passed out of the school-room 
into the anteroom. She knew that. 

They found a little public-house. “A Handful of 
Flowers” it was called. There was a garden lying 
beside it like a strip of embroidery. It was queer, in¬ 
congruous, like a panel of exquisite colouring on a 
housemaid’s afternoon black. 

They could have cold ham and tomatoes and bread 
and cheese and tea out there on a little table. 

They sat there and ate their meal in silence. The 
blank wall of the inn mothered them; a high hedge 
shut them in disquietingly. In the untidy beds tobacco 
plants and roses, sweet williams and carnations made 
an intoxicating bouquet. 

It was like a secret communion, vivid with the awful 
sweetness and excitement of their secret thoughts and 
their hidden wishes that were not hidden. 

“It isn’t hot here,” she said. 

“It will be hot going back.” 


70 The House of Broken Dreams 

Commonplaces they ran up between each other like 
black curtains to hide shiningness. 

“If Guardian is very angry shall I see you again ?” 

“See me again ?” 

The curtain was up. It was gone for ever. The 
blank wall of the house crept nearer. 

“Well, shall I?” 

“You must know,” he said. “You couldn't sit there 
not knowing, not feeling it; no woman could.” 

She knew then she was out of the anteroom. It 
was like playing a game she had played before. 

“Feeling what?” she said. 

“That I love you,” he said. “Ever since the first 
moment, Kane—before then. I know you're young, 
but I’ll wait for you. No! I won't wait for you! 
Kane darling . . . darling Kane.” 

Everything shining! the stars, their eyes, her tears, 
his laughter. . . . 

“I never thought it was like this!” 

“It will always be like this, my sweet.” 

hi 

They had a compartment to themselves going home. 
They sat, hands clasped, staring out at the splutters 
of yellow in the greyness outside the windows. 

Their love dipped and wheeled and soared in their 
minds like a bird in the sunshine, only now and then 
alighting on rear earth, and then instantly uneasy and 
off again. 

“It’s going to be awfully difficult,” ventured Kane. 

“I know.” 


The House of Broken Dreams 71 

“Difficult for Fannie.’’ 

“And for Angus.” 

“And for us.” 

Then they were off again, skimming into the future 
impatiently, and back into the past, in the new glad 
realm of their love. 

“I’m under age. He might make us wait two 
years.” 

She put her little brown hand on his. “Bobbie, 
you won’t make him angry?” 

“Of course I won’t, darling. Besides, Angus and 
I understand each other. I tell you he’s one of the 
very best, the very, very best. Of course it’s obvious 
that I shall have to go away. I can’t stay on at the 
house, but I shall come and see you every day.” 

“But you won’t make him angry, Bobbie dear. He 
and Fannie . . . well, it’s in the atmosphere. 
We don’t want them up against each other over us. 
They enjoy the jousting. I don’t want to be 
jousted over.” 

“What an absurd darling you are. You’re making 
an ogre out of a perfectly good fellow, just because 
he and your sister have been used to ruling the roost 
unquestioned and don’t hit it. They’re both rather 
tyrants.” 

“You don’t realize the feeling there is between 
them.” 

“Their pride is up in arms.” 

“More, much more than that. It’s deeper. He’s 
stirred something in Fannie, something I never knew 
was there. I’ve always thought Fannie was exquisitely 
controlled, balanced, logical. Angus Reid gets under 


72 The House of Broken Dreams 

that, and through it, or something. She's different 
the moment he comes into the room." 

They found a taxi. For them it was a little dark, 
secret room where they could speak and listen blessedly 
and be alone. A little blind, dark, secret room with 
the world going blindly by all wrapped in darkness or 
bathed in sudden stinging yellow light that rushed into 
the box so that they suddenly saw each other, before 
it rushed out again. 

“What was the world before you came?" he said. 
“It was no world at all," she answered humbly. 
“Simply no world at all." 


IV 

As Angus helped Marjorie Moneypenny wash up 
he talked and she listened. 

They worked surrounded by little and big labour- 
saving gadgets which Mrs. Moneypenny, trailing 
round ideal home exhibitions, had acquired at various 
times. Most of them had never been used since the 
first demonstration, some were rotting, corroding, and 
tarnishing gently from neglect and old age. 

Now and again Mrs. Moneypenny blew in and out, 
making brittle, silly, little remarks that broke off after 
the first few words and became a complaint. Angus 
brushed her away mentally without effort; he was 
used to brushing elderly females out of his con¬ 
sciousness. 

“Would you have the ceiling white-washed before 
the next girl comes in? Do you think it needs it. 


The House of Broken Dreams 73 

Angus? Fm sure I try and make everything nice 
every time.” 

“By Jove! Marjorie,” Angus said, “it's something 
to talk to an ordinary level-headed woman again. Fm 
fed up on the artistic temperament.” 

“Is this Fannie O’Rane pretty?” 

“I don’t know.” 

“You must know, Angus. A man generally does.” 

She turned and looked at him. Her hair was very 
gilt indeed under the unshaded downpour of the 
scullery light; her eyes were very blue. 

“It isn’t the sort of good looks I care for. She’s 
got the sort of face that is out of place at breakfast.” 

“Unusual?” 

“I suppose so. She irritates me, so I don’t stop to 
analyse her looks.” 

“I’ve never known you like this about anyone. I 
mean generally you’re so detached.” 

“I’m detached now, I think, but I hate inaction. 
For a whole month I’ve got to mark time—and the 
result will be the same at the end as if I’d acted 
straight away, and all that time lost.” 

“How has Mr. de Bouton taken it?” 

“Like a duck to water. He pals with the whole 
shoot. I’ve an idea he thinks . . He paused. 

“After all, if you’re going to put emotion in the place 
of common sense every time . . .” 

“Oh, well, he’s half French. They’re not depend¬ 
able. I never did like Bobbie Buttons; he’s got a way 
of laughing at one. One doesn’t like it.” 

“He’s a fine little chap really, Marjorie. I think 
the world of old Bobbie. Of course he’s a romantic, 


'74 The House of Broken Dreams 

but then those writing fellows never are on the level 
with themselves; they’re always scurry-funging in the 
undergrowth. They suffer, you know, up and down. 
He’s like that.” He paused. “It’s frightfully restful 
here. If you don’t mind I’ll come up quite a lot 
this month.” 

“You know we like to have you.” 

‘Til get awfully pugnacious living among enemies. 
It does get your back up.” 

“I am quite sure it would.” 

‘Tm not going to give in.” 

“It wouldn’t be you if you did. They’ll thank you 
in the end. I’ll do the salad bowl. It needs a dry 
cloth.” 

Mrs. Moneypenny blew in. 

“Marjorie, one of the apostle spoons is broken; 
snapped right off. Would you put them away? 

“Yes, I think I should; they’re tiresome to clean 
and we never use them.” 

“Dear, dear! I might as well sell my pretty things. 
If one has nothing to clean I suppose one can get 
cleaners. I don’t think I will put them away. Why 
should I? Yes, I suppose I’d better.” 

“What will you do with the little woman who 
plays?” she queried, when her mother had departed. 

“I know two aldermen who have influence at a 
home for old ladies in Surrey. I shall get her in there. 
It’s a charity organization.” 

“She ought to be grateful.” 

“It isn’t an attitude of mind they’re capable of.” 
“What is Kane like?” 

“Pretty in a gipsy sort of way. No strength of 


The House of Broken Dreams 75 

character. One sees in the O’Ranes why we’ve had 
so much trouble with the Irish. It’s the old story, 
hatred of discipline.” 

“Judy?” 

“I don't see much of her. Pretty, quite a kid.” 

“The boy?” 

“Wild, but clever; astonishing knowledge of the 
classics and of literature; that’s due to that Cole 
man. He’d get in anywhere on the classical side. 
Personally I’d rather see a boy keen on games and 
arithmetic than anything; it’s more normal.” 

“Of course it is. I shall be glad when you’re out 
of it all.” 

“By Jove! so shall I.” 

“It would have been so easy to let them go their 
own way.” 

“For some men, yes.” 

“I should be awfully firm.” 

“I shall merely carry out my original intentions.” 

She said: “If I were Fannie O’Rane I’d welcome 
it. Women aren’t really fitted for responsibility. It’s 
awfully difficult. I like definite people. People who 
deal with every day as it comes, you know. It makes 
the day after much easier.” She hung the towel up 
and wiped her hands on the roller towel. He felt a 
glow of gratitude for her. She made him feel so 
masculine, so sane, so sure. He felt like a landsman 
who is again on land, grateful for solidity and im¬ 
movability he had merely accepted before. 

“You’re awfully understanding,” he submitted. 

She did not stir him as Fannie O’Rane did; she 
soothed, she almost cossetted him. 


76 The House of Broken Dreams 

He had a sudden cinematographic vision of mar¬ 
riage with Marjorie Moneypenny; a place for every¬ 
thing and everything in its place. Well, he liked that. 
He hated hunting about. He felt oddly defiant. 
Defiant of what? He did not really know. His was 
the attitude of a thwarted little boy. “Fll show ’em.” 
Show whom? He did not know. He was only 
curious of the attitude tingling and pricking within 
him, making him oddly uncomfortable and unfamiliar 
to himself. 

He thought of Fannie O’Rane, the cool, remote 
smile that never reached her eyes, but left them grey 
and contemptuous. 


v 

He was still in a queer, worked-up mood when he 
got back to the O’Rane household. 

The little Punchinello butler said: 

“Miss Fannie said would you please go to her 
den, sir?” 

It made his mood suddenly concrete; vague petu¬ 
lance became aggression. 

“It’s past eleven,” he mentioned. 

“I know, sir, but Miss Fannie said I was to tell 
you the moment you arrived and take up some coffee.” 

He shrugged; he was aware that it was not in the 
best possible taste, that shrug. 

They were laughing and talking when he entered, 
Bobbie Buttons, Kane and Fannie. Fannie was 
gentler than he had ever seen her, gayer. Happiness 
radiated from them all. 


The House of Broken Dreams 77 

He said: “You wished to see me?” It was prim 
and priggish, and he knew it, and the queer, discon¬ 
certing silence that fell registered his impression; it 
was the painful suspension of enjoyment, the self- 
consciousness that a grown-up’s entrance into a childish 
game will sometimes produce. 

Kane stood up and said, “You see . . and 

then stopped with her hands tight clasped and looked 
at Bobbie. 

They were so gay, so young, so radiant. That 
was the word . . . radiance. There was some¬ 

thing about little Bobbie Buttons, his absurd snub- 
nose, his twinkling, vivid eyes, something near the 
thing men called nobility. He was ennobled, that 
was it. 

He was aware of a queer feeling. He knew what 
it was. Jealousy, childish, illogical jealousy. He 
was like the thin, long, little boy in spectacles who 
is not allowed to play games. He was out of the pic¬ 
ture. 

“Kane and Bobbie want to be engaged,” Fannie 
said. 

“They haven’t known each other a week.” 

He had an angry, baulked desire to participate in 
the vividness, the colour, the joy, the tremendous zest 
they seemed to get out of life. He felt lonely with 
an angry, helpless loneliness. 

“We’re sure,” said Kane; her voice lilted, it broke 
on a half laugh. 

“Sure of what?” he persisted. 

“Everything,” said Kane comprehensively. 

Angus turned to Bobbie. His voice was curt. 


78 The House of Broken Dreams 

“You must be mad.” 

“If I am, I like it.” 

He had it too, that air of carnival, of gay, breathless 
jousting with life. The whole air was electric with 
happiness, excitement. 

“Look here,” said Bobbie. "I meant to shut up, 
to be reasonable and wait. Then out of a clear sky 
. you know how it is.” 

“No,” said Angus stubbornly, “I don't know how 
it is ... I only know Kane is too young to 
know her own mind and you’re too impulsive to know 
yours. Love is as much a question of suitability, of 
mutual interests . . . What on earth can you 

know about each other!” 

Fannie said: “You’re not going to take it like this, 
Mr. Reid? They’re happy. You can see they’re 
happy.” 

Kane’s brown eyes flashed. She said: “You’re 
stuffy, you’re just stuffy! A week ago you weren’t 
in our lives.” 

“And neither was Mr. de Bouton,” he reminded her. 
“What’s the matter with you all? Are you incapable 
of seeing to-morrow? Is life nothing but an illogical 
yielding to illogical impulse? What can you know 
of each other? What can you know of life, Kane, 
cooped up here ? You can have no judgment. You’ve 
had no opportunity to form one. The thing is absurd 
. . . as absurd as those two children who ran away 

to Gretna Green in Dickens’ story. When you know 
more of life and you’ve had occasion to form your 
own judgments.” 


The House of Broken Dreams 79 

Bobbie grinned. He was absurdly friendly, elated, 
impervious to offence and common sense alike. 

“I’m sorry, old chap,” he said, “I’ve enlisted under 
the O’Rane banner . . . that’s the long and short 

of it. I came here really for a lark, an experience 
. . . and it turned out differently. One can’t 

know things beforehand. It doesn’t seem fair on 
you, but there are things out of our control.” 

“It is convenient to believe so,” said Angus. 

He was hurt, unbearably hurt. He was being 
deserted. It had been a queer, long, warm friendship 
his and Bobbie’s. It had given him a queer parental 
pleasure to control the latter’s many whimsies, to keep 
his phantasy pruned; and in return Bobbie had some¬ 
times given him tantalizing visions of a land of 
romance from which he seemed temperamentally 
debarred. 

“They want to marry,” Fannie said. 

“Not until she attains her majority,” said Angus. 
“She must go abroad and see the world a bit.” 

They stared at him. Fannie enigmatically. Kane 
tearfully. Robert de Bouton with growing resentment. 

“I wouldn’t be doing my duty by you if I gave my 
consent to anything so preposterous as a marriage 
between strangers and one of them a mere child. I’ll 
talk to you upstairs, Bobbie.” 

“You won’t. We’ll settle this thing here and now, 
Angus. I love Kane. She’s your ward. She is 
under age. I want to marry her. I am content to 
wait . . ” 

“I won’t be sent away,” said Kane. “I won’t go.” 

Then Angus grew cold and quiet. He was to stand 


80 The House of Broken Dreams 

quite alone then. Well, he’d always been alone as far 
as he could remember. People who did their duty 
were generally alone. Suddenly he wanted their 
sympathy, their understanding. 

“Look here,” he said, almost boyishly. “I took this 
job on, I’ve got to see it through. I’ve got to be true 
to myself. I can’t let you marry Bobbie, Kane, until 
you know more of life. It wouldn’t be right. It 
wouldn’t be fair on you. Happy marriage isn’t an 
affair of romance and sentiment. Marriage goes on 
after the honeymoon. I want you to go abroad for a 
year, travel, meet people. Be sensible. You’re so 
young, so unprepared for life. I know you think I’m 
a prig and a fool, but I can’t go against my own 
judgment. Kane, your father trusted me to help you 
avoid such a mistake as your up-bringing forces you 
to make. He put me in a position of tremendous trust 
and responsibility. Should I be true to it if I let you 
marry a man I introduced into your home? Marry 
him in utter ignorance, on a wave of impulse! Go 
away for a year. It isn’t long. If you feel the same 
when you come back you can marry each other. I 
withdraw all opposition. Why, child, you haven’t 
known any men.” 

“And I don’t want to.” 

“You see how immature your whole attitude is! 
Marriage is something more than an adventure, it’s 
a contract.” 

“I put my cards on the table,” Robert de Bouton 
said. “You force me to. I disapprove of the way 
you are conducting the whole trusteeship. I consider 
the attitude you’ve taken up from the first wholly 


The House of Broken Dreams 81 

lacking in kindness, imagination and even humanity. 
I’m going to clear out, but I’m going to have my say 
before I go. You’re inhuman. You’re going to turn 
all these poor souls out of this house, to take away 
the only thing they’ve got left in life . . . their 
last shred of faith in human nature. You may be able 
to legislate and direct, but you don’t understand things. 
You haven’t a spark of imagination in your whole 
body! You’ve never lived and you don’t understand 
other people wanting to live. You’re making a ghastly 
mess of things.” 

“Fm sorry, Bobbie, I can’t see what purpose is 
served by all these personalities.” 

“I’m coming to see Kane every day,” Bobbie 
burst out. 

“You’re not!” 

“The house is mine,” said Fannie. 

They were all white, all angry. Their voices 
sounded high, unnatural, like quarrelling birds. The 
very air seemed suddenly detranquillized, full of 
furious, bustling agitation. 

“Naturally, Miss O’Rane, if that is your at¬ 
titude . . 

“It is,” she said. 

He felt oddly stimulated and excited, but his voice 
was level. 

“It seems there is nothing more to be said. I have 
no intention of letting my ward marry until she comes 
of age. You merely strengthen me in my original 
resolves and demonstrate their wisdom. I introduce 
an impulsive philanderer into the house . . .” 

“Oh!” cried Kane sharply. 


82 


The House of Broken Dreams 


“See here!” said Angus curtly, “there isn't anyone 
in this house who tolerates my point of view or ac¬ 
knowledges that I have an objective other than of sheer 
priggishness and spite and a desire to butt in. Your 
attitude has forced me to be aggressive. If you were 
all going to die this year I’d say 'Go on,' but you've 
probably all got long lives in front of you, and you 
do nothing to prepare for them. I've promised to stay 
my hand for three more weeks and five days. I’ll do 
it and I'll stay in this house passively even if you make 
my life a misery. For three weeks and five days there 
is nothing to stop you seeing Kane every day, Bobbie. 
Miss O’Rane gives you permission. At the end of 
that time I intend to send Kane abroad with a charm¬ 
ing family I have found, three months in Paris, then 
Spain, Italy and the East. If she comes back in the 
same mind about you it will at least be a mind able to 
sum things up and weigh them. I shall feel satisfied 
that I have done my duty. I don’t forbid you to write 
to each other. I am entirely reasonable. I merely 
demand reason from you.” 

“I'll not go,” said Kane. “I'll not be dictated to.” 

“You've got to learn discipline.” His voice was 
suddenly wistful. “It isn’t I who teach it to you, it's 
life. Oh! try and take the long view, Kane; you’ve got 
to know the road before you decide on it, and you 
can’t know it at nineteen and living the sheltered, fan¬ 
tastic life you have. I must do what I feel, I know, is 
right.” 

Bobbie Buttons turned to Fannie. 

“May I take Kane to Kew to-morrow, Fannie?” 

“You may,” said Fannie O’Rane. 


The House of Broken Dreams 83 

Angus walked to the window and stood staring down 
at Papa Pip’s garden dreaming in the moonlight. He 
felt old and even a little dry and withered. He saw 
himself aridly with their eyes . . . just a tire¬ 

some, stuffy prig. They had no ballast these people. 
Will-o’-the-wisps floating through the days, charming, 
impractical, but gay with a gaiety he envied, young 
with the youth that had somehow passed him by. It 
could never catch up with him. He could never catch 
up with it. 

Their voices crisped behind him, shutting him out. 

VI 

He found letters in his room. From his mother, his 
mother’s bailiff, one from an aunt, his aunt’s broker, 
two from tenants on the estate. They were all a little 
querulous and helpless and petty. 

He gave them careful, patient attention. He dealt 
with them honestly and painstakingly after due con¬ 
sideration. To his mother he wrote kindly and affec¬ 
tionately, ignoring her peevishness, buoying her up, 
encouraging her. She was not to worry. He would 
deal with everything; and he would have a talk with 
the cook when he came down; he was quite sure it 
could all be put right. 

It was early morning when he had finished. 

He went to the window and looked out. 

It would be so much easier and pleasanter to give in 
and let them all go their own way. He felt tired and 
somehow vaguely tempted. It was dull keeping on 


84 The House of Broken Dreams 

keeping on and being disliked for it. Doing one s 
duty was lonely work. 

The sun came tripping in golden slippers among Papa 
Pip’s flowers—reds and blues and oranges and mauves 
leapt and quivered under his eyes. It was rather a 
wonderful world. He brooded over it while it shim¬ 
mered under his eyes in a scintillating diamond mesh 
of dew. Perhaps there were things in it he’d never 
dreamt of—things that had natural homes in men’s 
hearts, gay things, solemn things, wonderful things. 

He saw them suddenly in Fannie O’Rane’s hands, 
withheld from him. She ran with him through the sun¬ 
light over Papa Pip’s flowers, she held them up and 
mocked him. He wanted them. He wanted them from 
Fannie O’Rane. 

He was subconsciously aware that he was in love 
with Fannie O’Rane. It came with a shock, oddly un¬ 
pleasant and disconcerting. It was an odd discovery, 
almost a sensation. He had held love in his heart as 
a blind man might hold a bird in his hand, aware only 
of the fluttering. . . . Now he saw and the flut¬ 

tering became merely incidental. 

His startled mind anchored on to Marjorie Money- 
penny. He lifted her into his consciousness hopefully, 
but it was like darkening a light when he had hoped 
and believed it would lighten a darkness. It served only 
to add to his bewilderment. 


Chapter IV 


i 

F OR Kane and Bobbie the days sped winged with 
happiness and wonder, full charged with novelty. 
And Kane said, nestling or challenging, brilliantly 
brown and red, glowing with her love: 

“Oh! Bobbie . . . there’s the end of the month. 
How will it end?” 

And Bobbie said: 

“I shall get you in the end as I was meant to in 
the beginning, you very beautiful and priceless little 
blessing.” 

A wall of misunderstanding had fallen between him 
and Angus Reid; their movements were obscure to 
each other, their mental processes suddenly foreign. 
Their old, long enduring friendship had gone as com¬ 
pletely as if one of them had died; there was no further 
mental interchange. It had vanished. They spoke 
to each other civilly, they smiled like well-bred 
strangers who make way for each other. 

So Bobbie came every day for his love and took her 
out into an enchanted world that stayed with them 
whether they themselves went or stayed. 

They went in trains that became golden coaches, into 
country that might have been furnished with green 
fields and moon daisies especially for their coming; 
85 


86 


The House of Broken Dreams 


the world draped itself into an exquisite background 
against which they were merely conscious of others' 
movements and their own, and the coming and going 
of kindly shadows that broke for a minute into their 
enchantment. These shadows wished them well, there 
was wistful benison in their eyes. The shadow Miss 
Proctor played for them. They sat in the dark in the 
long drawing-room and her music flowed over their 
hearts like promises and pledges. They sat in Papa 
Rip’s garden among his flowers, and the gnarled hands 
of the shadow Papa Pip trembled as he planted tiny 
things in soil he crumbled patiently between his fingers 
and mixed with lime and silver sand. Sometimes a 
leaf fluttered down, a flower fell; he looked at the 
dahlia buds. He had seen many autumns come and go. 
He would have fended it off and kept them there and 
his flowers and the sun for ever. Sometimes the little 
shadow poet Cole read to them in his sad, beautiful 
little voice and they listened like people who leave the 
door of Heaven a little ajar that they may hear plaints 
of the earthbound. The love he read of in his sad, 
sweet little voice was like a secret sacred possession. 
They caught each other’s eyes and seemed to lift it 
shiningly, exultantly. 

Everyone round them lovingly preserved the 
moments of that wondrous month until for them it 
took on the semblance of eternity and their imagination 
could see no break in its shiningness. 

Gladys, the vicar’s wife, was thrilled at the news 
of their engagement. She clasped her little work- 
roughened, blue-veined hands, and her eyes shone with 
starved hunger. 


The House of Broken Dreams 


87 


“Oh! Kane, you’ll have a real wedding!” 

“How do you mean?” 

“A veil and bridesmaids and everything.” 

“I hadn’t thought,” said Kane. “Yes, I suppose 

__ »> 
so. 

“When people are married,” said Gladys, “you know, 
well-known people, I always read those bits in the 
papers, their gold trains and everything. I see them, 
I do really; you know what I mean!” 

“You poor little thing,” Kane said impulsively. 

“It always seems to me so funny,” said the vicar’s 
wife. “To the people who can have the clothes it 
doesn’t mean anything; you know what I mean.” 

She was a funny little wraith, a ghost thing with 
pathetic blue-ringed eyes. She rose at four in the 
morning to do her work. She never complained. Her 
smile was wan but it persisted. 

“They send me summer sale catalogues,” Gladys 
said. “I choose the dresses . . . just like a silly kid 
with a toy-shop catalogue. It’s very petty, but it 
keeps me happy. I don’t feel very well these days.” 

“I wish you could get a decent living,” Kane said. 

“I wouldn’t change for anything. Philip’s so aw¬ 
fully happy. He doesn’t miss things. He’s just happy. 
Any woman who lived with Philip would have secret 
sidetracks in her mind, sometimes I tell myself that. 
Mine doesn’t hurt, just an awful longing for pretty 
things that I can’t conquer. Philip’s got God and he’s 
got me. You know what I mean. He lives between 
us. I’m not like that. I think it’s best if you can share 
your littleness and your envies with your husband. 
Philip hasn’t got any. He doesn’t like to think I have. 


88 The House of Broken Dreams 

I hate being dowdy and feeling dowdy. It’s like a 
degradation. I can’t explain what I mean. I can’t 
explain . . . ” 

“I think I understand,” said Kane. 

To Bobbie Bouton she explained: “She’s such a lit¬ 
tle brick, really, Bobbie . . . with just that weakness. 
I’m not sure it isn’t a particularly concentrated love 
of beauty. Life means something to her. I went with 
her once to a dress show. She didn’t want the things. 
It wasn’t envy, it was sheer adoration. She sat aw¬ 
fully quiet and pale, and I felt as if she were listening 
to music I couldn’t hear. They had black curtains and 
that new daylight light, and every now and then she 
said, ‘How lovely! How lovely!’ or ‘Philip would like 
me in that.’ It’s as if she can’t realize herself except 
through her clothes. Do you think she’s pretty?” 

“It’s a brittle sort of prettiness.” 

“I think if she could talk about her clothes-hunger 
to Philip it would be easier. It just hurts Philip, he 
can’t get her the things. He sits and looks grieved. 
He can’t see she’s expressing some need in herself, a 
sort of hunger she doesn’t really expect to have satis¬ 
fied but it helps her to talk about. She’s so plucky. She 
works like a nigger. She fainted twice the other morn¬ 
ing over her washing, but she wouldn’t tell Philip or 
anyone, only Fannie found her sitting down and look¬ 
ing queer and got the truth out of her. Philip adores 
her, but he feels religious about her, even at breakfast. 
She’s ... up there. She does try so hard to live 
up there where he’s put her. Of course, it’s selfish 
of Philip really; she satisfies the need in him to wor¬ 
ship. You won’t do that to me, Bobbie ... put me 


The House of Broken Dreams 89 

up there where I daren’t stretch and have a temper 
unless I tumble out of the unnatural place you’ve made 
for me in your heart.” 

“I promise you shall have all the tempers you want.” 

“I think it’s better to start on the level in married 
life, be what you are.” 

‘It’s never been done,” smiled Bobbie. “It can’t 
be done. You aren’t what you are when you’re in 
love.” 

She smiled. She put her little brown hand on his 
knee. He covered it with his own and waited. 

“Bobbie, what a lot of unhappy people there are in 
the world!” 

“We only think that when we’re very happy our¬ 
selves, dear.” 

“Your friend Angus, for instance.” 

“Oh, I don’t know. Angus’s got a line and he beats 
it out.” 

“He’s beginning to suspect it isn’t the only line.” 

“Then he’ll beat it all the harder and straighter. 
That’s Angus.” 

“There’s Fannie, all walled in because she thinks she 
ought to be. They’re both lonely and isolated by a 
sense of duty.” 

“They’ve both had heavy responsibilities too early. 
They both repress their temperaments; self-discipline.” 

“What’s this Moneypenny girl like. The one in 
Hampstead that he goes to see?” 

“Hearty and healthy and concrete. She likes things 
and people nice and clean. She’d suit any man who 
lived the average unthinking life between the office 
and the home. She’s a very nice girl, but I don’t like 


90 The House of Broken Dreams 

her. She believes The Times is better than The Mail 
because it’s twopence, and British meat is better than 
foreign because it’s British.” 

“Isn’t she right?” 

“Nearly always. She’s full of popular prejudices, 
and they’re the most difficult thing in the world to 
disprove because everyone is on her side.” 

“Is Angus Reid going to marry her?” 

“I used to think so.” 

“You think he has altered.” 

“Of course.” 

“Do you think what I think?” 

“You’ll have to tell me what you think.” 

“Of course it sounds absurd when almost 
everything they say and do is up against each other 
. . . but I’ve sometimes thought that he and 
Fannie ...” 

“It has occurred to me,” said Bobbie. 

* * * * * 

n 

So Angus Reid lived alone in a house full of people, 
as folks do every day and no one suspecting it, and 
sometimes not even they themselves. 

And Angus knew suddenly and inexplicably that he 
had been lonely all his life and was lonely now, and 
his loneliness instead of being mere comfortable grow¬ 
ing room became unfurnished space that irked him. 

The exchange of current prejudices that pass for 
opinions is easy and entirely painless; you receive some¬ 
thing so absolutely similar in return that you are only 


The House of Broken Dreams 91 

conscious of the giving, but the exchange of new ideas 
is an entirely different proposition. You pass over 
something you never realized the value of until you 
hear it derided and wish to snatch it back, or you hold 
out something so foreign that there is nothing to ex¬ 
change and you are left with an idea on your hands, 
as it were. 

That was what happened between Angus and Mar¬ 
jorie. He had never needed her so much. They let each 
other down and were mutually unfair to each other. 
He demanded things outside her limitations because he 
himself had passed outside them. She could deal 
efficiently with anything concrete, but he developed a 
baffling way of talking in the abstract. She had an 
irritating way of pulling him up as a grown-up will 
pull up a child in the middle of a delicious, enjoyable 
fairy story. “But it couldn’t happen to us, Angus,” 
and “But I don’t see what it’s got to do with us,” and 
“Let’s wait till it comes,” or “It doesn’t concern us.” 

At the sentimental asylum in Soho, people were 
always ready to sort out your funny, bumbling new 
ideas, to help you unpack them, as it were, and they 
passed over their own, clumsy, real things, oddly fash¬ 
ioned, not polished things of familiar, uniform pat¬ 
tern like Marjorie’s ideas. 

“But don’t you understand,” he cried. “I’m only 
supposing.” 

“You never used to suppose,” said Marjorie. “I 
don’t see what good it does. When a thing comes 
along deal with it.” 

“But it’s interesting.” 

“I think it’s a waste of time.” 


92 The House of Broken Dreams 

‘‘There are other things in life than the things 
you read in the morning’s newspaper.” 

“People who get on in life haven’t time to bother 
about them.” 

“You’re so sure,” he protested. “So sure of every¬ 
thing. Life’s so big.” 

“But you’re only asked to live in a corner of it, 
Angus.” She was knitting a white jumper under the 
trees in the garden. Her square, capable hands moved 
quickly. 

“I can’t make you out, Angus,” she paused. “I 
like a man to have ideas and stick to them. That’s 
what I like about you. You never altered. Lately, 
they’ve got loose. I simply can’t make you out. I 
should say, if I didn’t know otherwise, that some¬ 
thing’s got hold of you.” 

He had a will-o’-the-wisp vision of Fannie O’Rane. 
She shimmered beyond his common sense, and until 
lately he had not known there was anything beyond 
his common sense. 

“I’m not myself,” he said. It was an unconscious 
plea for understanding. 

“Are you ever going to speak to that wretched 
Robert de Bouton again?” 

“Of course.” 

“I’m not!” 

He looked at her in surprise. Her mouth, her eyes 
had gone hard. 

“But he’s in love,” he said; “I mean you’ve only 
got to see them together. When a man’s in love . . . 
I mean like that.” 

She was staring at him. He had been idly fishing 


The House of Broken Dreams 93 

in his own mind. He was embarrassed by his catch 
because she saw it. He tried to throw it carelessly 
back. 

“They say when a man’s in love ...” 

“He went there as your friend and at the end of a 
week he rounds on you. Why can’t you see things 
straight, Angus? He’s a sentimental deserter, but 
that doesn’t alter his desertion. I simply don’t under¬ 
stand you these days, you’re so . . . muddled.” 

hi 

Everyone was out. Down in the kitchen the little 
Punchinello man and his minions worked invisible and 
unheard. The rest of the house was dead. 

Angus hjad spent the week-end at his mother’s. 
There had been much to do, more to listen to. Pie 
tried to ease his mind on her. She was piqued and 
peevish at his preoccupation with the O’Rane house¬ 
hold. She presented a stiff little front, behind which 
she sulked and protested and suspected. 

It dawned on Angus for the first time, as it has 
dawned on millions of other only sons, that he had 
hopelessly spoilt his mother. 

“It’s the O’Rane girl,” she said. “You can’t tell 
me!” 

She was outraged, more like a mistress than a 
mother. Her eyes were like his, deep brown, but they 
seemed to have grown moist with old age like licked 
brandy-balls. They disconcerted him. 

“If it’s any satisfaction to you to know it,” he said, 


94 The House of Broken Dreams 

“we hate each other, we’re barely civil. I’m having 
a thin time.” 

“You chose it,” she said. “Will you bring her here 
to live? Of course it’s your place.” 

He tried to be gentle, patient. “Don’t be silly, little 
mother. You are being silly, you know.” 

She tried to be omniscient, that last card the aged 
play. 

“You can’t fool me, Angus. I haven’t been in the 
world for seventy years for nothing. I can see things. 
I know. A young man doesn’t turn himself inside out 
from a sense of duty. I should like to see her.” 

“My dear mother, you’re completely off the lines.” 

“You wouldn’t get angry if there wasn’t something 
in it.” 

Clearly no ease was to be obtained there. 

He came back to an empty house possessed of a 
new and devastating unrest. His mental world was 
in chaos; his thoughts prowled carelessly; they were 
no longer useful missionaries: they had become insati¬ 
able tourists.” 

“Everyone out?” he asked the Punchinello. 

“Master Pat’s about somewhere, sir, or he was.” 

“Everyone well?” 

“Everyone, sir.” 

He would have kept him but he did not know what 
else to say. 

“All right. I’ll find Master Pat.” 

“I think he’s up in one of the attics, sir.” 

How the sunlight twinkled in the quiet rooms of 
the old house, creeping through half-drawn blinds, 
making little stinging pools of colour in unexpected 


The House of Broken Dreams 95 

places. The rooms seemed graciously resting, there 
was something stately in their spaciousness. They 
were like polite old people who slept surrepti¬ 
tiously when they were alone and woke to vivid, sym¬ 
pathetic life when people returned to them. They did 
not wake for him. Only for the O’Ranes they woke 
and identified themselves with the genial, happy atmos¬ 
phere. For him they remained as impersonal as a 
museum, as dead. He knocked at the door of Fannie 
O’Rane’s study and peeped in because he knew she was 
not there. It gave him an odd feeling, bitter-sweet. 
There she sat, and wrote and thought and planned. 
This was her little throne-room, her audience chamber. 
He saw her, withdrawn from them all, a secret from 
them all, a gentle, beautiful, baffling enigma. 

He closed the door very gently. It seemed to him 
this little room smiled in its sleep. 

He made his tour of the attics slowly. They fas¬ 
cinated him. By a man’s house shall you know what 
he is, but by his attic shall you know what he was: 
there the phases he has outgrown linger on in dust and 
twilight; there in odd corners lie the perfume of his 
childhood and the odd, awkward ghosts of his youth. 
In the drawing-room, in the office, in the smoking- 
room you shall see the fruit ripen, but up in the attics 
are perishing the roots by which such splendour grew; 
the little clockwork model that was the seed of an 
ultimate career, the doll that was the awakener of an 
eternal instinct, the old fancy dress that stimulated an 
enduring vanity. A house where a family has been 
reared grows downwards. Its roots are at the top; 
thence they spread downwards, through the first "room 


96 The House of Broken Dreams 

all to myself,” to “breakfast with mother and daddy,” 
right down to the dining-room and “dining with the 
others,” and on into the street, the world, and so over 
the hills and far away. That is why mothers, even 
old mothers whose children have passed the hills and 
reached the far away, spring-clean upwards and not 
downwards. They know they will not see the end of 
things and that they have lost the beginnings; but the 
ghosts of the beginnings are up there waiting for them. 
It is nearly always the time to shut the house up for 
the summer holiday before Mary and the “char” have 
reached the attics even with the bravest mothers. 

It was really Fannie that Angus was trying to find 
in the attics with the little dusty windows that framed 
big pieces of a sun-gilded city. He was trying to dis¬ 
cover the little girl who had grown up at twelve and 
become a mother to her own father. He did not think 
of himself as the little boy who had grown up a little 
later and become a father to his mother. He did not 
see it that way. He did not know he was subcon¬ 
sciously seeking a lost youth, or signs of it. He 
did not find Fannie in the attics. He found Kane 
and Judy in dolls and dolls’ houses on which the 
dust lay thick as fur, in old photographs of Owen 
Nares, in albums of picture post-cards, in knitted reins 
of rainbow wool, in a doll’s cooking stove red with 
rust. He found Pat in a broken box kite and an old 
fort, in an ancient bus conductor’s outfit. He found 
signs of Mr. O’Rane’s restless flitting from country 
to country in search of forgetfulness, an Italian sash, 
a cheap copy of an Andrea Delambia, an Etruscan 
vase, odds and ends of pottery and embroidery, a man- 


The House of Broken Dreams 97 

doline, a guitar, a zither, a Blick typewriter, a child’s 
chair. 

He opened the door of the last attic and found Pat. 

There was a little platform under the high barred 
windows, and the boy sat there reading, cross-legged, 
absorbed. Beside him a little cupboard, with the dusty 
door open and a shining key in it, showed two rows of 
books. 

They were all school stories: “The Hill,” “The 
Brothers,” “Stalky and Co.,” “The Loom of Youth” 
—books by Mais, by Walpole; stories of boys’ schools. 

Angus Reid said frightfully quietly: 

“I didn’t know you wanted to go that badly, Pat.” 

Pat shut the cupboard-door, he locked it, put the 
key in his pocket and kept his hand there; then he 
suddenly realized the inadequacy of it, the thorough¬ 
ness of his betrayal. 

“It’s the cricket chiefly,” he said. 

The wind puffed the curtains; the curtains puffed 
out a jet of silvery dust which danced in on the 
sunlight. 

Angus Reid came and sat on the platform and lit 
a pipe slowly and in silence. He knew that Pat had 
been delivered out of Fannie’s hands into his. He 
knew that he ought to be glad. 

“It’s the cricket with a lot of boys,” he said. 

“And the other fellows.” 

“Yes, and the other fellows.” 

“Did you go to a public school?” 

“Only for a while. My mother wanted me back. 
I’ve always been sorry.” He paused. “We’ll have a 
talk to your sister.” 


98 The House of Broken Dreams 

“No!” said Pat. 

Angus looked at him; the boy was loutish with his 
years, not his temperament. He was unhappy, not 
actively, but in nagging little festering ways he was 
unhappy and unfulfilled. 

“She doesn’t want me to go to school and I told 
her I didn’t want to. It’s all for one and one for 
all in this house . . . it has to be. We’re peculiar 
people.” 

“And you don’t like it?” 

“I don’t like it, but I don’t see anything else for it. 
It’s all right as long as we keep with peculiar people, 
I suppose.” 

Angus puffed at his pipe. He was no longer alone. 
One of the O’Rane’s army was creeping furtively to 
his side. He felt oddly sorry, almost -ashamed. He 
would have liked to see them united and unconquered. 
This thing was happening without Fannie’s knowledge 
by a mere trick of mood and moment. It was the first 
break in the ranks. 

“It’s more comfortable to be ordinary,” said Pat. 
“You mustn’t think I’m against Fannie. Fannie’s 
simply top-hole. Father was against school for boys. 
I see why. Fannie doesn’t; she merely carries out his 
wishes. With father it was selfishness.” 

“Why?” 

“He knew if I went to a public school I wouldn’t 
fit in here afterwards. I had some of these books when 
he was alive. There’s an old man, a bookseller Mr. 
Cole goes to for translations and things; he tells me 
when there’s a good school story out and I buy it. 
I’ve got ‘The Way of Revelation’ here. I bought that 


The House of Broken Dreams 99 

last. I wouldn’t talk like a boy if it wasn’t for these. 
I don’t know anything about boys.” 

Angus looked at him. He was vivid, like all the 
O’Ranes, a touch of red in his hair and skin. 

“So you sacrificed yourself to preserve an unbroken 
front.” 

“I couldn’t let on, if that’s what you mean,” said 
Pat. “And I’m not going to let on now.” He looked 
at Angus sharply. “This is a talk between men?” 

“Surely,” said Angus. 

“One can’t go back on women.” 

“One can’t,” said Angus. “Which school shall we 
send you to?” 

“You mean to!” 

“I always meant to, Pat. I thought that was under¬ 
stood.” 

“I know,” said Pat breathlessly. “But one couldn’t 
knuckle under when all the others were fighting.” 

A queer little smile touched Angus’s lips. In his 
world of new values one touched victory and it became 
defeat. 

“I don’t know why your sister should know you’re 
a renegade,” he said slowly. “Why not put the onus 
of it all on me . . . the common enemy.” 

“Ought I to?” 

“I think so, old chap,” he pulled at his pipe rumi- 
natingly. “I quite think so. You see, if you go up 
and say, ‘This chap Reid was right all the time; I 
want to go to school,’ you’ll merely be humiliating her 
and proving me right.” 

“She does hate you!” 

“I believe you’re right.” 


loo The House of Broken Dreams 

“I don’t know that Fannie is like anyone else.” 

“I don’t know that she is, Pat.” 

They began to talk of schools, of games, of books, 
of a hundred and one things. 

The sunlight crept out of the attic; they were there 
in the greyness with yesterday’s toys and to-morrow’s 
thoughts. The boy was flushed, eager, excited; his 
hopes and dreams tumbled over each other as fast 
as they came. 

Then suddenly the door opened and Fannie stood 
there. 

“They told me you were up here, Pat,” she said. 

The light died out of Pat’s face and out of hers; 
they both wore the same look of startled bleakness. 

“I fear I interrupted a propaganda meeting,” said 
Fannie O’Rane icily. 


IV 

He told Marjorie Moneypenny about Pat. 

They sat in the dining-room because it rained and 
the drawing-room ceiling had been distempered. There 
was a smell of size and late dinner greens. 

“Well, that’s splendid! Of course, you went and told 
Miss O’Rane.” 

“No, I didn’t. I couldn’t really. It wouldn’t have 
been fair on the boy or on her.” 

“Rubbish! You’re out to down her, aren’t you?” 

Was he? His thoughts paused in their idle run¬ 
ning and looked back. Incredibly ugly the whole idea 
looked expressed in Marjories terse way. His imagina¬ 
tion flamed up and etched Fannie O’Rane. He saw 


The House of Broken Dreams 101 

her with emotional intensity, the leader, an absurdly 
gallant figure, valiant with absurd valiancy, and the 
O’Rane army behind her deserting and she not know¬ 
ing. 

“And Judy wants to be a children’s nurse,” he said. 
“She came to me this morning when Fannie was out. 
She’d been battling with her conscience. I promised 
to get her into the Great Ormond Street Hospital for 
Children later if I could. They love Miss O’Rane 
and they want to be loyal, but there’s the lure of 
their own desires; it’s very natural.” 

“It seems to me everything’s twisting round your 
way. You’ve only got to dispose of the old people.” 

“There’s something mean about this . . . the secret 
deserting in the night, and yet it’s only mean if she 
gets to know of it. Of course the ethics of it are all 
wrong.” 

“Who cares about ethics, even if they know what 
they are? It’s results that matter. I don’t know what 
you want to be so chivalrous for, Angus. She’d like 
to see you beaten if she got the chance. She’s work¬ 
ing for it.” 

“Yes, I know.” 

“She’s spoilt.” 

“Yes, I know.” 

“I should think she’s a hateful type, the type that 
wants taking down a peg or two,” she glanced at him. 
“She can’t be nice anyway. How was your mother?” 

“Difficult,” he frowned a little. “Possessive.” 

“I suppose it was the O’Ranes?” 

“How did you guess?” 


102 


The House of Broken Dreams 


Again the smell of size and cabbage water; and 
the bright blue boring of Marjorie’s eyes. 

‘‘Well, it’s only natural. They have rather eaten 
into you, you know. You’re quite different.” 

“I don’t see it. My interest is . . . executive.” 

“Did your mother think that?” 

“Oh! Mother!” he shrugged. 

He felt her nodding wisely to herself even though 
she never moved. 

“How is the clergyman’s wife who is so crazy about 
clothes?” 

“She’s there every day. There’s something nice 
about her . . . like an eager, rather crushed child.” 

“She doesn’t sound to me at all a suitable person 
for a clergyman’s wife.” 

“He adores her.” 

“That may be.” 

Funny he’d never noticed how Marjorie bit her 
words off. It was the sort of voice that sounded well 
on the telephone. Now he felt shut in with it in too 
small a space, that was the feeling. 

“I shall be glad when it’s all over. I suppose it’s 
worry, but you’re not yourself, and I dare say your 
mother noticed that. You’re not so—so . . . clear- 
cut.” 

“So cock-sure, you mean.” 

I liked you cock-sure as you call it. One knew where 
one was. You don’t even sit still in the way you used 
to. I mean you fidget.” 

“You’ll say, like de Bouton, that the O’Ranes have 
magiced me.” 


The House of Broken Dreams 103 

“I shouldn’t say anything so silly.” 

Did men alter suddenly, get whisked away from the 
old roads and the old friends? He wondered. He 
thought of Robert de Bouton’s extravagant gesture 
the first time they had seen the O’Rane house together, 
his laughing prophecy, “This is where Marjorie 
Moneypenny dwindles until she is no bigger than an 
incident.” 

It dawned on him with a start that she had dwin¬ 
dled and she was dwindling. Because he was lonely he 
made a hasty snatch at what was left. 

“Tell me what you’ve been doing.” 

“You aren’t interested and you don’t listen any 
more. I don’t know what you come here for.” 

“I come here because I am lonely.” 

“But you’re enjoying it.” 

He knew that was true. His loneliest moments 
were his fullest because Fannie peopled them. 

He rose to his feet. She rose to hers. 

“I wish,” she said, “you wouldn’t go on staying 
there.” 

“I gave my word.” 

“Fannie O’Rane’s getting round you.” 

“My dear girl, we never speak.” 

“She wouldn’t make you happy, a girl with funny 
ideas. You’re a conventionalist, Angus.” 

“You’re as absurd as mother!” 

He stopped, annoyed with himself; he could feel 
her nodding to herself again, although she never moved. 

“I thought that was what your mother thought,” 
she said. 


104 


The House of Broken Dreams 


v 

The walls were red distemper, the carpet was an¬ 
other red, the tablecloth was another red. It was 
a hot room to look at, a roast beef and Christmas 
pudding room. Outside it was eighty in the shade. 

Gladys Kerr laid the table at one end. Her hus¬ 
band, Leachman’s “The Church's Object Lessons," 
and “The Personal Life of the Clergy," by Robinson, 
occupied the other half. Three chairs were filled by 
large and garish hand-painted posters of gnomes and 
fairies advertising a sale of work in aid of the fund 
for a new boiler and church repairs, a dog’s basket 
full of crochetted and knitted doyleys stood on the 
hearthrug, over the fire-screen were slung pale blue 
hug-me-tights; and a row of babies’ bootikins stood 
between the Birmingham Benares vases on the man¬ 
telpiece. 

In the centre of the table were five red roses ex¬ 
quisitely arranged in a plain black bowl. Gladys Kerr’s 
blue eyes rested on them as she went in and out. 

“Supper’s ready, Philip. I’m afraid the lettuce is 
not very crisp. I couldn’t get down to the market 
this morning. Mrs. Ferguson wanted me to help her 
finish off her kewpies. As a matter of fact she hadn’t 
started them. I don’t know that they’ll sell. They 
aren’t useful. I wish we could afford to furnish the 
little room, dear; then I shouldn’t have to interrupt 
you for meals.’’ 

“We’ll be able to one day, little woman.’’ 

“You look worried, Philip." 

I am a bit. That fellow Saunders has broken out 


The House of Broken Dreams 105 

again. Bates came and told me. I went round at once. 
Saunders was out and Mrs. Saunders had a cut lip. 
He came home blind last night. Ton my soul, I be¬ 
lieve they like the excitement of it, she seemed so 
pleased. There wasn’t a penny in the house. I gave 
her what I’d got for the kids. I thought I’d got him 
hoisted on the water waggon for keeps this time. 
Now we’ll have to start all over again.” 

“It’s . . . it’s so hopeless, Philip.” 

“No, it isn’t, honey! One gets marvellous results 
sometimes. It’s the feeling of their need for one. 
It’s exciting and thrilling getting hold of them, drag¬ 
ging them up, there’s a splendour about it. One can’t 
help a little personal satisfaction. I fight it all I can. 
You’re not eating anything, dearest.” 

“I’m not hungry, Philip.” 

“It’s the heat. I wish you could get away. There’s 
your people, but I don’t see how I can spare you till 
the sale is over.” 

“I know; I’m perfectly all right.” 

“Let me make you a cup of tea?” 

“No. No, really.” 

“You look a regular little fashion-plate to-night, 
old lady.” 

“It... it was Miss Elder’s frock,” she said. “When 
she was turning out for the rummage sale I asked her 
to give it to me.” 

“But I thought it was for cushion covers. Surely 
I heard her say something about it before she left.” 

“I didn’t promise to make cushion covers. It was 
she who suggested that. It isn’t as if she lives near 
us any more.” 


106 The House of Broken Dreams 

“I don’t see that that alters things, dear.” 

“Don’t I look nice in it?” 

“You look charming.” 

“It’s a very little thing, Philip. She gave me the 
frock to do what I liked with. She only suggested 
cushion covers.” 

“I know.” 

“You’re not cross?” 

“I’m not cross, dear. I haven’t any right to be 
cross.” 

“I think one can be too scrupulous. I’m not a clergy¬ 
man. I do try to measure up to standard.” 

“I know you do, dear. Only . . .” 

“Only what, Philip?” 

“Nothing.” 

She cleared away very quietly. The charwoman 
had left the cat’s milk in a saucer; when she moved 
it a blackbeetle ran from underneath like a highly 
varnished toy. 

She went up and lay down in her room. It was 
hot. The heat seemed to press down from the ceiling 
in layers. She was so tired; the tiredness stretched 
achingly to the ends of fingers and toes. Lots of 
smooth, beautifully written bodes Philip had, so 
smooth, so beautiful that they just rolled away from 
you and left you high and dry where you were. She 
tried to anchor on to the ideals they expressed and 
pull herself up by them, above grey silk frocks and 
things. She tried very, very earnestly, very, very 
hard. She went in search of God, diffidently because 
she felt Him to be particularly the friend of Philip 
and the Parish, but hardly an acquaintance of hers. 


The House of Broken Dreams 107 

What was goodness and how did people grow good? 
She wished she knew. She would have given worlds 
to know. Her love for Philip flowered wist¬ 
fully in her thoughts. She would have liked to 
have been a great, strong comrade—something like 
Britannia on the backs of the pennies—and succoured 
him. 

She began to cry very, very quietly; and the tears 
seemed to roll over her thoughts in some mysterious 
way and smooth and cool them. 

Perhaps it was living in a house one hadn’t chosen 
among things one hadn’t chosen that made one try 
and preserve the little tawdry bits that expressed one¬ 
self. It was funny how violently she wished to express 
herself. It was the only vivid thing about her, like 
a new bright bit in an old thing. 

She wished passionately she was built on the noble 
scale or that there were directions for the attain¬ 
ment of nobility procurable. She did not find them 
in the lives of the saints. In those days goodness 
seemed merely a social attainment. 

She had been asleep when Philip came up to her. 
and the room was dark and blessedly cool. 

“Not cross?” she said, just like a child. 

“Not cross,” he said, just like a father. 

“I try to grow like you, Philip.” 

He laughed with his lips against her fair, lustreless 
hair. 

She folded the silence round her a minute. Through 
the window she could see the stars. They looked cool, 
like little diamonds on a blue gown. 


lo8 The House of Broken Dreams 

“I love you. I love you. I love you. Isn't that 
enough?" 

4 ‘I want to be a line wife." 

“You are." 

“Philip, I want to be a fine mother." 

He looked at her. The stars looked at her; kind 
little old shining eyes. 

For a minute she saw God like a beautiful bird sing¬ 
ing in the sunlight. Absurd! Beautiful! 

“Do you think I shall grow good?" 

She felt his eyes. Wet? 

For one minute they clung there in the little rift 
that lies between to-day and to-morrow; the little refuge 
that has been made timeless by the worlds' lovers and 
is the nearest earthly point to Heaven. 


Chapter V 


i 

AND Fannie who had always been lonely and sus- 
^ ^pected it, suddenly knew she was lonely. 

She came to have the queer, illogical feeling that 
she had set herself, or had been set, apart. 

For the first time it frightened her, scared her 
oddly; her loneliness became a vague menace, a well- 
built box from which she sought to free herself by 
contact with the people around her; and they drove 
her back on herself, they did not even seem conscious 
of her desire to establish contact. 

She tried Pat, but Pat was curt and evasive. He 
would not meet her eyes, he held her off with a boy’s 
impregnable brusqueries. He was ill at ease and a 
little conscience-stricken with her. She made a sudden 
claim on him as kinsman, and knowing himself a 
deserter, he was inclined to resent it. 

“The end of the month is very near, Pat,” she said. 

Pictures leapt vividy into his young mind; green 
grass and boys playing games in white flannels; he 
heard, like a reassuring promise, the chatter of gay 
young voices. 

“I suppose he’s really going to send you to school ?” 

“Yes, in the September term.” He could not help 
a lilt in his voice. 

109 


no The House of Broken Dreams 

“Father wouldn’t have wished it, that’s what worries 
me.” 

He wriggled away from her mentally, and the fur¬ 
ther he wriggled the more clearly he saw her defend¬ 
ing a fort no one desired to defend except herself, 
championing a fantastic cause that no one but herself 
believed ever ought to have been created. Even to 
his young, rather hard eyes her position was not 
without a wistful beauty. 

“Oh! Pat, why did he come and break things up?” 

The boy had turned stony, his face was a little sullen; 
he had retreated behind something that was quite 
new. 

“Is he going to carry out his programme . . . just 
as he said?” 

He could not answer that. He 'yvould have told 
her what he saw very clearly indeed, that the curtain 
had to come down on a fairy-tale that real life might 
go on. He mumbled something. 

“Did you know that he has decided that Judy is 
to be a hospital nurse ... a children’s nurse?” 

He did know, but when she mentioned it like that, 
he felt a little better. Judy was beside him in his 
deception. And Kane, too, had been dragged out of 
the fairy-tale by her heart. Impossible to tell Fannie 
they were glad to go, add insult to disloyalty. Kinder 
to let her think her army had merely surrendered 
to force. 

“Oh! how I do dislike him!” said Fannie. “He’s 
so overbearing.” 

“I don’t think he’s that. He’s got a scheme and 
he’s carried it out. He’s been quiet enough about it.” 


The House of Broken Dreams ill 

She looked at him. There was a gallantry in her 
last stand because she did not know it was a last 
stand and that her forces had broken up behind her. 

“When you’ve all gone I shall keep this place on 
alone,” she said. “I shall offer Papa Pip and Mr. 
Cole and Miss Proctor my hospitality till . . . till it 
gives out. He cannot force them to go to his wretched 
institutions if I offer them a home here. They are 
free to stay.” 

“Look here, Fannie,” he said. “Look here . . .” 

She rose to her feet. Her face was white, bleak. 
He sensed that she suffered for her fairy-tale and 
would continue to suffer; with sudden compunction 
he said: 

“Look here, Fannie, it’s been no end of fun here 
and we shall always remember it, but things can’t go 
on. I mean that’s common sense.” 

“Half the brutal, unthinking things in the world 
are done under the banner of common sense.” 

They looked at each other. She made a funny little 
gesture. 

“All right, old boy,” she said, with a queer little 
smile. “All right.” 

Of course she thought he had been got at, he could 
see that. 

It was all right as long as she didn’t suspect what 
he himself had never suspected until the chance had 
come, that he had been just waiting to go, waiting for 
the chance to slip into real life. 

She spoke to Angus about it. 

“I hear that you are sending Pat to Lancing.” 

“You heard it first of all from me, Miss O’Rane.” 


112 The House of Broken Dreams 

She bent her head. Her wiry hair was more a coro¬ 
net than ever, regal. She held her head up. “Her 
little Valiancy/’ Angus called her to himself. 

“I do not think the boy wishes to go/’ 

‘‘I do not propose to consult him.” 

‘‘You are going to adhere to your original pro¬ 
gramme ?” 

“I see no reason to alter it.” 

“You cannot be wrong!” 

“I have had no evidence that I am, so far.” 

“You dispose of us all.” 

“I do not presume to dispose of you.” 

“Are you going to tell Papa Pip and all the rest 
of them you are going to ... to clear them out.” 

“At the end of the month.” 

“I want to be there when you discharge your . . . 
your pleasant office.” 

He was frightfully quiet. 

“Certainly, Miss O’Rane. I would not have sug¬ 
gested it. It might be painful. I object to your calling 
it my pleasant office. It is my painful duty. Goo’ 
Lord! d’you think I like it?” 

“I don’t think you mind. It ministers to your per¬ 
verted sense of duty and discipline.” 

He sat on the edge of a table. His lean brown hands 
gripped it on either side of him. His clear brown 
eyes were intent upon her. She felt him gripping 
for her mind and imagination. She had a weak mo¬ 
ment’s desire to surrender it to his clear-cut common 
sense, to yield up the fret and the pain and the un¬ 
availing battle of it to his quiet jurisdiction. 

“Look here, Miss Fannie,” he said, “I beg you, 


The House of Broken Dreams 113 

for your own peace of mind, to get clear of your 
sentimental mirage for a moment.” 

His voice was kind, friendly, strong. 

“I am an angel of deliverance,” he said, and smiled; 
“only you can’t see it.” 

She waited. She had a delicate, fascinating way of 
waiting. It was as if her mind paused on tip-toe ready 
to run away, just poised for a minute so that he must 
be quick to catch it or it would be gone. 

“The longer the blow was stayed the more unmerci¬ 
fully it would have fallen,” he said, “and it would 
have had to fall. You could not have carried on like 
this financially for long. It is kinder that the end should 
come now. There is enough saved to start Pat and 
Judy out in life, to give you all enough to live on. If 
the household had gone on as it is now, at the end of 
a year or two there would have been nothing for any 
of you, and you would have been a ghastly muck-up, 
frankly. What will have to come now would have come 
then, but it would have been more far-reaching and 
destructive in its effects.” 

She looked him straight in the eyes. 

“I don’t think I told you why I wanted to be present 
at the interview. I am going to offer them my personal 
hospitality for so long as it will last.” 

11 

“Look here,” said Bobbie Buttons. “Frankly, need 
you ?” 

Tremendously quiet behind his pipe smoke, tre- 


114 The House of Broken Dreams 

mendously grave this Bobbie, and Angus facing him, 
equally quiet, equally grave behind his cigarette smoke. 

“You’re misrepresenting yourself, you know, Reid.” 

“To whom?” 

“Everybody.” 

Wedgewood-blue pipe smoke, blue-white cigarette 
smoke, all around them the tranquillity of well-used 
household gods, and their voices coming from behind 
the smoke, feeling for each other as it were, for old 
landmarks in their common experience, for an open¬ 
ing back into the careless communion of other days. 

“Look here, old chap.” 

“Are you sure you understand, Bobbie?” 

“I don’t; frankly, I don’t. It seems inhuman to 
turn all these poor old devils out.” 

The light fading, and in the drawing-room above 
Miss Proctor playing soft, kind, gentle music. 

“I can’t afford to keep them, Bobbie, that’s the 
truth.” 

Startled silence and the delicate thread of the music 
weaving itself palely between them, mending rifts as it 
went, obliterating stains, making the friendship whole 
as it was before; and the pleasant consciousness of it 
being made whole. 

“Barton and I went into their affairs last week. 
We were waiting for certain papers from Sumatra of 
all places. It appears Mr. O’Rane invested money 
there and left the titles and things in the hands of a 
Dutch notary. The result was a shock to us both. 
Fannie has three hundred pounds a year, and the 
rest have exactly one hundred and fifty pounds a year 
apiece.” 


The House of Broken Dreams 115 

“What are you going to do?” 

“You have so often accused me of being a man of 
one idea, Bobbie, that you should know. I am going to 
carry out my original intention with regard to the 
O’Ranes. Kane will go abroad with Professor Fel- 
lowes and his wife and daughter for a year, Judy 
will go to school at Eastbourne until she is old enough 
for the Great Ormond Street Hospital; Pat will go 
to Lancing.” 

“And Fannie?” 

“I don't know.” 

“Of course,” said Bobbie, “you’ve made me feel a 
damn fool.” 

Two thinkers behind blue haze. 

“Why not let me take Kane off your hands?” 

“At the end of a year, Bobbie, I’ll be very pleased 
to be best man. She’s such a child, Bobbie. It’s the 
life she’s had. Oh! I know your arguments, my friend, 
I know. I’m sorry I’ve got the duty bug, old boy. I 
can’t shake it. If I were a self-made man I should 
slap my chest and say, That’s me!’ ” 

“What if Fannie persists in keeping them here, old 
Papa Pip, Mr. Cole, Miss Proctor and all?” 

“I don’t think they’ll stay, Bobbie, once I have ex- 
plainedj the O’Rane estate cannot run to it. They 
seem to me to be ladies and gentlemen ... I use that 
term without snobbery.” 

“Will you tell them the truth ?” 

“Oh, no! I believe we are to have a meeting ex¬ 
traordinary with Miss Fannie as chairman. It will be 
extremely unpleasant.” 

“Then she isn’t to know?” 


Ii6 The House of Broken Dreams 
“She least of all.” 

“I said this place would mischief you, my boy, and 
your Bond Street boots are stuck fast in enchantment. 
Aren’t you taking on rather a lot?” 

“Yes,” said Angus, “but I like it.” 

“Wouldn’t it be better to tell Fannie?” 

“I think not. Miss Fannie will not be dependent 
on me. She shall have the three hundred. Put the 
rest down to my terrible mania for organization. It’s 
a form of self-indulgence, as you’ve often pointed 
out. Therefore I am merely paying for my pleasures, 
which everyone does.” 

“You’ve altered.” 

“So Marjorie says,” he paused. “By the way, natu¬ 
rally I don’t wish Kane to know.” 

“Very well. What’s at the back of it all?” 

“A peculiar form of self-indulgence, I suspect.” 

“You’ve always been such a concrete person.” 

“Yes, I know.” 

“Why not tell Fannie?” 

“She wouldn’t let me do anything and I couldn’t 
do anything on the three hundred pounds. She can’t 
dislike me more cordially than she does, and it’s easier 
all round if she doesn’t know, much easier, easier for 
the others, too. Gratitude to someone you can’t stand 
is really an unbearable thing to carry round. I lack 
the courage to inflict it. I imagine anyone of Miss 
Fannie’s temperament would find it pretty intolerable. 
I’m gratifying my own whim and personal vanity.” 

“But you know they’ll feel pretty poisonous about 
the old people going, and it will put you in quite a 
false light.” 


The House of Broken Dreams 117 

‘‘There's an awful lot of time wasted in explaining 
motives. Besides, I'm used to playing a lone hand. 
There’s something that pleases my vanity about it. 
I’m not even sure I’m not feeding my vanity at their 
expense." 

Bobbie rose and walked the room. 

“I seethe with petty suspicion, Angus." 

“Of me?" 

“Of your motives." 

“I think perhaps it were better to let them alone. 
If you can’t have a thing, Bobbie, there’s a sort of 
satisfaction in driving it further and further away." 

“Meaning Fannie?" 

“You were always an intelligent little boy." 

“It's awfully unlike you to evade things." 

“Perhaps I never had anything to evade before." 

“Did it ever occur to you that Fannie O’Rane is a 
perfectly ordinary young woman?" 

“I shall try and find comfort in the thought when 
we meet to deal with the pensioners. It will be a 
ghastly unpleasant affair. I must own I squirm at the 
contemplation of it. The worst of it is I’m so damn 
sorry for them myself, the whole bunch." 

“Does your mother know of the financial responsi¬ 
bilities you contemplate?" 

“I shall have to tell her. She was rather absurd 
about Miss O’Rane." 

“Or discerning?" 

“Both." 

“And Marjorie?" 

“Marjorie regards the O’Ranes as denizens of an- 


li8 The House of Broken Dreams 

other world, and takes a naturalist's intelligent and 
surprised interest in them. ,, 

“I see. Look here, Angus, I find it very difficult 
to pin you down." 

“I don’t wonder. Half the time I’m not there, not 
in the places where I could always find myself men¬ 
tally. I’m constantly trying to pin myself down, or I 
shall get lost altogether. That’s why I’ve got to see 
this thing through. It’s a bit of pure Reidism, per¬ 
haps the last bit of pure Reidism I shall ever put 
through.’’ 

“Look here, Angus, be serious.’’ 

“Can’t a man be serious unless he’s talking com¬ 
monplaces ?” 

“If no one knows the truth no one can thank you.’’ 

“I don’t want expensive thanks. They would cost 
the O’Ranes dear; more than the courtesy is worth. 
Look here, old boy, I’m a temperamental legislator 
with a lovely little game to play all on my own. It 
tickles my vanity. That expresses it absolutely.’’ 

“And the outcome?’’ 

“Again the realization of one’s purely personal con¬ 
ception of duty, always very gratifying; at the end 
of a year Kane will be married to you, at the end 
of three years Judy will be started in a career of her 
own, and I shall be free to concentrate my entire 
financial resources on Pat. The satisfaction of father¬ 
hood without its pangs.’’ 

“I wonder if you at all realize the feelings you’ll 
evoke in a temperamental young creature like Fannie 
O’Rane when you turn those delightful derelicts out.’’ 

“I’ve quite a shrewd estimate, but it is that or 


The House of Broken Dreams 119 

blowing the whole bag of tricks as far as the O’Ranes 
are concerned. My dear boy, what would an entirely 
unsophisticated girl of Judy's age and an equally un¬ 
trained boy of twelve achieve on a hundred and fifty 
a year? Very much better to let charity surge in un¬ 
perceived on a wave of particularly virile hate. Better 
not to let my right hand know what my left hand 
doeth rather than give the O’Ranes an unforgettable 
performance of the two of them plunging about for 
their rescue. It must be horrible to suffer a kind 
enemy, perfectly horrible.” 

His friend shot a glance at him. In the half light 
he was a creature of clearly defined outlines; Bobbie 
could feel his vivid brown eyes grinning cheerfully in 
his brown face. 

“I suppose you know you’re behaving like a bloomin’ 
hero?” 

“In the stilly watches of the night I get splendid 
visions of myself.” 

“You won’t talk seriously to me.” 

“No, old boy, I won’t.” 

“You won’t change your mind about Kane and my¬ 
self?” 

“I won’t. I don’t expect either of you to thank me, 
but if I didn’t do what my sense of duty absolutely 
screamed at me to do I might have myself to thank 
one day; and I should hate that. Things have got a 
good deal boiled down lately, Bobbie, and I’ve got 
to be true to the things that are left or I’ll become a 
pretty non-functioning sort of creature. I’ve lost my 
map and obtained a vista. From my point of view 
it’s a very inadequate exchange, because having lived 


120 The House of Broken Dreams 

twenty-six years without a vista I don’t know what to 
do with it now I’ve got one.” 

“Look here. Couldn’t Kane talk to Fannie about 
you and find out what she really feels?” 

“Miss Fannie herself has left me not the slightest 
doubt,” said Angus dryly. “Not the slightest in the 
world.” 


hi 

“If you could gather them together quietly,” said 
Angus. “If we could make it just a simple explanation 
of facts. It isn’t essential to alarm them one moment 
before it is necessary.” 

“You prefer to hit unexpectedly?” 

“It is your own method of expressing it, Miss 
O’Rane.” 

It is doubtful which of them dreaded the ordeal 
more; but she was high-keyed to it, overwrought by 
four weeks’ constant play of her vivid imagination on 
her yet vivider sympathies. 

She saw him as a Herod, that was the stark truth; 
and the protective maternal instinct in her that life 
had forced and vivified at the expense of other in¬ 
stincts was outraged. He was quiet with a sort of 
transparent glaze of indifference. It was that appar¬ 
ent indifference which goaded her. It seemed mon¬ 
strous to all her outraged sensibilities. 

They stood together in the drawing-room, that long 
room that ran the length of the whole house with 
the window that framed Papa Pip’s garden and the 
window that looked out on the sguare. 


The House of Broken Dreams 121 

It had been a brassy, unwinking August day; and 
now the sky was finely drawn like thin dove-grey silk 
over tarnished gold. The noise of the traffic was like 
distant tumbrils. Thunder came and went like the 
breathing of a wheezy giant. The London sparrows 
skimmed low in the heavy atmosphere like the little 
top-heavy toy aeroplanes against a faded background. 

He would have given anything for a less atmos¬ 
pheric evening; there were unrest and promise of 
storm in the very air. 

“Look here! ,, he said impulsively. “Need you? Let 
me see this thing through. It’ll hurt. It can’t do 
any good.” 

She seemed oddly frail, transparent beneath her 
crown of copper-wire hair. The steady stare of her 
dark-ringed grey eyes disconcerted him. 

“Miss O’Rane,” he said earnestly, “I promise to be 
gentle. This operation has got to be. You can’t do 
any good by being present. You will only infinitely 
distress yourself.” 

“You are sending Pat to school against his will. You 
are sending Judy to school against her will. You are 
separating Kane against her will,” she challenged 
passionately. “But this thing you shan’t do! The 
others are helpless, but the old people have got me!” 

She was quivering with anger, but he could only 
feel pity. Litter helpless pity and vague dismay. 

“Look here!” he said disappointedly. “I beg you! 
It isn’t any good tilting at windmills. Things have 
to be faced up to. All this fuss isn’t only cruelty to 
yourself, it’s cruelty to them, momentarily deferring 
the inevitable. It’s like making people sorry that they’ve 


122 The House of Broken Dreams 

got to die, desperate because Winter is coming . . . 
it’s all unavailing sorrow and anguish. If you had 
enough money to keep these three old people until 
they die, I would say ‘God speed’; I would take off 
my hat to you, I swear it. I would pay you court as a 
ridiculous and valiant idealist ... but you aren’t; 
you are a self-deceiver; you don’t lack a certain flam¬ 
boyant, short-sighted courage, but you lack the great 
essential, the courage to square up to hard facts.” 

She was white-lipped. 

“Is the lecture over?” 

He bowed. 

“They are in the dining-room,” she said. “And 
I have given instructions for us not to be disturbed.” 

He put out his hand detainingly. His eyes searched 
her face. 

“Miss O’Rane, I stayed my hand the promised 
month. Won’t you relinquish the unconscious cruelty 
of your philanthropy?” 

“I will not,” she said. 

He followed her silently, wishing with all his newly 
awakened imagination that it had been one of those 
quiet, clear, pearl-coloured nights that are like prom¬ 
ises renewed. He felt for Fannie the absurdest, griev¬ 
ing tenderness. It stilled him. It seemed in some 
mysterious way to give him a sharp, not unpleasant, 
consciousness of maturity. 

The dining-room was full of that pale, copper-col¬ 
oured storm light. Against it the trees in the square 
were etched in softest grey stillness. It seemed to 
hint that some of that same anticipatory soft grey 
stillness animated the three old people. Were they, 


The House of Broken Dreams 123 

too, aware of storms ahead? They gave him gentle 
smiles and each smile wrung his heart a little. 

“Dears,” said Fannie, “Mr. Angus Reid wants to 
speak to you all.” 

“Mr. de Bouton, dearie,” said Miss Proctor. 

“No,” said Angus. “My name is Reid.” 

No dismay in the old, patient eyes, only surprise, 
flickering quickly like a little brittle fire, dying out. 

The crash of traffic in the busy roads set about the 
dreaming square, like tumbrils; the sulphurous yellow 
deepening. 

“Before he died,” said Angus Reid slowly, “Mr. 
O’Rane nominated me guardian and trustee to his 
three children who were yet minors, Kane, Judy and 
Pat.” 

He paused. The friendliness of their quiet eyes 
was unbearable; they hurt. Miss Proctor had started 
her crochet. 

“I heard something about this place from the 
lawyer,” he said. “A garbled account. I wanted to 
judge for myself. I wanted to be, if you will forgive 
the phrase, a free, unbiassed observer. I wanted to 
get to the core of it. I knew I should be received as 
an enemy and suffer an enemy’s strict limitations for 
acquiring knowledge. I conceived the not very orig¬ 
inal or brilliant idea of changing places with my friend 
Robert de Bouton. Miss O’Rane knew almost at once, 
and, of course, Bobbie told Kane. It was at her sug¬ 
gestion I preserved the deception for a month. She 
wanted me to soak myself in the atmosphere of this 
place, to lend myself to it before I judged—” he 
looked at them directly. He looked at Fannie sitting 


124 The House of Broken Dreams 

with her tired eyes closed. “I found it unbelievably 
beautiful, a fairy-tale come true.” 

“Yes,” said Papa Pip gently; “yes, my dear.” 

“I am going to tell you right away,” he said. “It 
can’t go on. I have been into Mr. O’Rane’s financial 
affairs with the lawyer closely. This is the position. 
It is your temporary security or the well-being of 
the young O’Ranes. There isn’t enough money for 
both. There is only enough money left to carry on 
this place with stringent economies for a year or 
two, or to educate and keep the young O’Ranes until 
they are able to battle with life. Certain obvious ex¬ 
pectations of Mr. O’Rane’s have proved groundless. 
Until Mr. Barton and I got all his affairs, which were 
scattered, into our hands, we never realized, what I am 
quite sure he himself never suspected, that he had 
been living on capital for years. That capital is irre¬ 
claimable. I feel that it is up to us to provide a future 
for his children with what is left.” 

He had gripped the arms of his chair so tight that 
when he laid his hands on his knees again they seemed 
oddly like swollen wooden toys. 

Tumbrils passing. The waiting grey shadows 
of the trees. The patient waiting grey shadows before 
him. Their patience wrenched his heart. 

Miss Proctor said very gently, with a brave little 
smile that never slipped, but seemed nailed to her face: 

“Of course, the idea! As if old people counted 
when it came to the young. I mean, as if they did. 
I can take a little room somewhere and give music 
lessons. It isn’t as if I were even a spinster really. 
. . . I’ve enjoyed my bit of mothering. It would be 


The House of Broken Dreams 125 

odd if I couldn’t sacrifice for the children. The old 
don’t count when it comes to the young.” 

“Of course, they don’t,” said Mr. Cole quietly. 
“Youth is the only thing that counts. I know lots 
of doctors and I write very neatly. I shall be able 
to pick my way splendidly. ’Tisn’t many men can say 
they owe the beginning of their business career to 
the highest blood-pressure in London,” he laughed. 
“There’s my poetry, too.” He turned to Papa Pip 
and Miss Proctor. “Perhaps we can find three rooms 
together in a boarding house; we’ve grown to tolerate 
each other’s little weaknesses, and it’s little weaknesses 
that matter at our age. Why, it’ll be quite fun . . . 
pioneering. I’ve often thought I could write those 
little leaders. I’m very glad you told us, dear boy, so 
frankly. None of us would have had anything else. It 
is an honour, a very great honour, to be able to sacrifice 
anything . . .” He stopped. 

Papa Pip said: 

“And there’s gardening for me. Just someone to 
help a bit with the rough work and I can grow any¬ 
thing anywhere. And I shan’t be far away, near enough 
to come and give the garden here a bit of a do. Why! 
it’ll give me a new interest in life; it will really. I 
was getting set above myself, it was so easy.” 

Fannie sprang to her feet. 

“Oh! my dears,” she cried passionately. “Oh! my 
dear dears, what rubbish you’re all talking! What 
am I going to do without you all, with Pat and Kane 
and Judy taken from me? Stay with me and we’ll 
share; perhaps it won’t be so much we’ll have, but 
we’ll be together.” 


126 The House of Broken Dreams 

Her face was working, the tears running down her 
cheeks. 

“If Daddy were here! Oh! if Daddy were here. 
I offer you his home ... the home he gave you. Your 
home.” 

Miss Proctor crossed the room to her and took 
her hand. 

“My dear little girl,” she said quietly, “it isn’t as if 
we weren’t three able-bodied people well able to look 
after ourselves and each other. Why, you foolish 
child, it’s never too late to start again. I believe we’re 
all looking forward to it. It’s a chance to prove that 
our dreams aren’t really broken. Who knows that I 
shan’t earn enough money to have my audition after 
all. My dear, this isn’t the spirit in which to take it. 
There’s Pat and Judy with all their life before them.” 

Little Mr. Cole said: 

“We have got to stand down, dear child. Don’t deny 
us the pleasure of making it a magnificent beau geste. 
For myself I have been a lazy devil, flitting from 
poem to poem and from day to day. This has awak¬ 
ened me. Together we three old friends will achieve 
much. You shall be proud of us.” 

She quieted then. She stood, hands clasped before 
her. 

“For me this is the end of things. I can’t see ahead 
at all. Early next week Pat goes to school, and Judy, 
I shall be alone. I beg you to stay with me until I 
have adjusted myself to the emptiness of life and the 
changed conditions. I ask it as an act of friendliness.” 

“You make it hard for us, dear,” Papa Pip said. 


The House of Broken Dreams 137 

“We could stay just a fortnight while we are look¬ 
ing about,” said Miss Proctor slowly. 

“Just a fortnight,” echoed Mr. Cole. “You under¬ 
stand, dear child, we are at the age when it becomes 
so easy to take the easier path, to follow the line of 
least resistance. We must not be encouraged, we 
must not encourage ourselves. We must keep braced. 
Braced,” he repeated firmly. 

Miss Proctor bent and kissed her. 

“I am sure,” she said slowly, “I am quite sure this 
is a hidden blessing,” her voice faltered a little. “We 
have rested a long time, and we were not born to rest.” 

She went very quickly out of the room, holding 
her small figure tremendously and ridiculously erect. 

Papa Pip went to the window, and leant far out 
and picked two little rosebuds, one red, one white. 
He took Fannie’s fingers and fastened them round 
them. He looked into her eyes, smiled radiantly, and 
hurried quickly and wordlessly away. 

Little Mr. Cole said: 

“There is romance in all this. Adventure is a state 
of mind. It is ageless. We have suddenly inherited 
it, we three fossils. Don’t worry about us, rejoice 
with us.” He patted her cheek and left them alone. 

Angus Reid looked at her. The flowers drooped 
in her fingers. Her queer grey eyes were dark with 
tragedy as if she saw her world disintegrating before 
her eyes. 

“I’m sorry,” he said. “You won’t believe I’m sorry.” 

She became suddenly aware of pallor and tiredness 
and kindness. He was shorn of his armour. He was 


128 The House of Broken Dreams 

human; her immediate need for kindness made her 
afraid of it. 

“I hope you are satisfied, 1 ” she said, just like a child. 
“You do yourself an injustice as well as myself,” 
he said. 

When she looked for the rosebuds Papa Pip had 
given her she could only find one. 

The other had gone. 


IV 

She woke suddenly out of a dreamless sleep and saw 
Pat standing there. 

The moonlight striped him like a zebra. His hair 
was rumpled into rough fur. 

“Look here, Fannie!” he said. “I couldn’t sleep.” 

She held out her hand. Her voice mothered him 
warmly. 

“You ‘11 like it when you get used to it, boy. All 
boys do.” 

“I know,” he said. “That’s the trouble.” 

She frowned a little. Her black and silver sur¬ 
roundings seemed unfamiliar; and Pat standing there 
unfamiliar in his old little-boy dressing gown like a 
long smoking jacket. She sought her bearings dis¬ 
trustfully. 

“Reid’s a damn good fellow,” said Pat. 

“Need we discuss him?” 

“That’s why I came,” said Pat. “I hate hiding 
behind another fellow’s trousers.” 

“Whose trousers, dear?” said Fannie vaguely. 


The House of Broken Dreams 129 

Her hair was a mantle; out of it looked her little, 
pale, sleepy face. 

“I want to go to school,” said Pat. “I’ve always 
wanted to go to school/’ 

She sat bolt upright. Landmarks leapt at her, the 
dressing-table, the wardrobe. She was mistress of her 
world again. 

“Now look here, Pat,” she said. “What are you 
trying to tell me?” 

“Simply this,” said Pat. “That Reid isn’t driving 
Judy and me to school against our will, and we’re not 
a couple of poor little martyrs. We’ve always been 
simply crazy to go. We’ve always wanted 
to be like other people, and Judy’s always been simply 
mad to nurse kids. You’ve been taking it out of Reid 
for sending us, and all the time he’s doing for us just 
what we’ve never had the pluck to do for ourselves. 
We’re ncx end grateful to him and I can’t bear to see 
you treating him like mud. I mean I think it’s simply 
rotten. Reid wouldn’t let me tell you because he 
thought it would humiliate and hurt you . . . but 
I couldn’t stick it.” 

“Very considerate of him.” 

“There you go! That's what I can’t stick.” 

She was frightfully hurt, bewildered. 

“I think you’re a little out of your depth, Pat. 
You’d better go back to bed.” 

They stared at each other. He sat on the edge of 
the bed and took her hand. It was odd that the nearer, 
he came the further he seemed to go away. 

“I want to be a chartered accountant,” he said. 


130 The House of Broken Dreams 

“There’s something about figures, always has been, 
you know.” 

She thought of his classical education by Mr. Cole. 

“ I want to grow up like Angus Reid.” 

She withdrew her fingers. 

“Look here, Fannie,” he said. “No fellow likes 
being odd.” 

“Odd?” 

“Well . . . could I ask a fellow from school back 
here ?” 

“I don’t see why not.” 

“Judy and I have seen for a long time; and I believe 
Kane is beginning to,” he had a flash of shrewd in¬ 
sight. “The O’Rane standard isn’t a standard at all, 
Fannie; it’s a world within a world. I came here be¬ 
cause suddenly it seemed to me it was jolly unfair to 
treat Reid as an oppressor when he’s a . . . liberator. 
We’ve all been bilgy to him and he’s been topping all 
through. I mean it was jolly fine of him not wanting 
you to know we wanted to clear out. I couldn’t stick 
the idea of your taking it out of him after we’d gone.” 

“ I do not propose to hold communications with him 
after you are gone. He’s not my guardian. You’d 
better go back to bed, Pat. If you had told me you 
thought our life here peculiar and you wanted to go 
to school it could have been arranged ages ago. We 
had ideals here. I thought we stood shoulder to 
shoulder.” 

“Look here,” he said, “I’m awfully sorry, Fannie. 
I felt so jolly skunky about the whole business, lumping 
it on to Reid. I’m awfully sorry, Fannie. You 
couldn’t call me a deserter. I never enlisted, I mean 


The House of Broken Dreams 


131 

I was just roped in. I mean one is roped into families. 
I wouldn't be honest if I didn’t say I think it’s the best 
thing that could happen to all of us. We’re going to 
be normal. I mean it’s jollier being normal. It wasn’t 
easy coming to your study to talk. I mean you have 
been sort of head-mistress.” 

She flinched at that. She saw herself with unbear¬ 
able clearness legislating, directing. 

“You can’t expect a fellow to live in a fairy-tale 
after he knows it’s a fairy-tale.” 

“I don’t know where I am,” she said piteously, “with 
anyone. One was so sure of things . . . and now 
one isn’t sure.” 

Vaguely he sensed her distress. He said clumsily: 
“It’s easier to live like other people. Reid’s making 
that possible.” 

She cried out in sudden temper and pain combined: 

“Will you leave off quoting him at once!” 

He made a clumsy, helpless gesture. 

“There you are! The O’Rane attitude! It’s 
hopeless!” 


v 

She went down to see Judy’s school. She would not 
be petty if she would not be acquiescent. 

Pat had gone. A clumsy bear’s hug and an ex¬ 
hilarating leap into a taxi and so into a new life. Exit 
Pat. Oh! she knew that quite well. She never pos¬ 
sessed that gift of self-delusion that mitigates the pangs 
of parents with growing children, that belief in con¬ 
tinued mental cuddliness. It was hail and farewell to 


132 The House of Broken Dreams 

the Pat she knew. She was tremendously plucky, 
almost bracing. 

“Good-bye, dearest old thing. Shall I wish you a 
century the first week?” . . . that was all. 

She knew it would be different when he came back, 
that the familiar aspects of him would have changed 
and darkened, that she would feel almost apologetic 
with him for being what she had always been. 

It is never the same person who comes back to the 
same things. 

The face of her world was changing. 

They talked to her crisply and brightly at Judy’s 
school. It was a crisp and bright morning; the sea was 
cobalt and whisked egg, the sands were cluttered with 
people and the band blared. Everybody happy, every¬ 
body glad business. There were girls playing tennis on 
the red rubble courts. There were girls painting in 
the lovely gardens, painting paper-looking hollyhocks 
against a red wall. They looked at her vaguely, ab¬ 
sorbed. They were all absorbed, in-drawn; they had 
that look. Soon Judy would wear it. In the blue and 
white kitchens there were girls making bread and cakes. 
Beaten in bronze over the blue-tiled fireplaces were 
mottoes. The place reeked of a sort of hardy, heady 
“uplift.” Here they made a cult of cheery boyishness. 
Ideals and religion seemed to have a sporting tilt. They 
talked of the development of individuality, and one saw 
rows of fearless, hefty, clean-skinned little-boy girls 
growing into hipless, bobbed-hair career enthusiasts. 

She lunched at the headmistress’s table. It was on 
a platform that overlooked the long, oak-panelled room. 
Babble! babble! babble! and pink poppies in brown 


The House of Broken Dreams 133 

vases on the polished table. Pigtails, pigtails wagging. 
They talked to her of Rebecca West’s new book, of the 
Wimbledon tournament. They tore ravenously at a 
subject in a hard bright way, bit it up in little clearly 
thought-out, analytical sentences. 

They frightened her. 

To-morrow Judy was to be incorporated with the 
strange, keen life she saw going on around her. She 
was glad she had seen it. 

Here again she had no illusions. This school would 
“make over” Judy in pattern with all these other wag¬ 
ging pigtails. 

Good-bye, Judy. 

When she got home Angus said: 

“I hope, I do hope you approved.” 

Impossible to disapprove of anything so sane and 
healthy and normal. 

“Oh, yes,” she said. “Quite.” 

“Miss O’Rane, I’d give anything if you were with 
me in this,” he said wistfully. 


Chapter VI 


i 

T HE spirit of the house was gone. 

It was no longer a peaceful community; they 
hung together as individuals, with here and there 
interludes when a wraith of the old spirit stalked among 
them. 

To Fannie it was like something beautiful broken 
and stuck carelessly together. Its late beauty was ob¬ 
scured by the obviousness of its destruction. 

Papa Pip, Mr. Cole and Miss Proctor were hunt¬ 
ing for rooms. They scoured different neighbour¬ 
hoods, and in the evenings they compared prices. 

They did not consult Fannie from obvious feelings 
of delicacy; they were loth to press upon her their 
migratory state; they did not even discuss their future 
with her. Because they felt obliged not to voice their 
chief preoccupation, a feeling of restraint sprang up 
between them; they even felt stilted and ill at ease 
whenever they were with her. 

It hurt her unbearably. Like Judy and Pat, they 
too were keen to pass out, it seemed, to be quit of her 
love and care and the sanctuary that had been made 
for them. She tried so hard, so desperately hard to 
be glad they took it like that. She upbraided herself 
passionately for self-love and vanity . . . but the 
sting remained. 


134 


The House of Broken Dreams 135 

They talked to Angus eagerly; she knew that. 

His frankness made a bond between them. They 
respected it and him. He called something into being 
with each one of them that they had secretly felt the 
lack of, and they gave him secret thanks. 

They no longer needed her, that was the whole thing. 
Their roads stretched away from her, and they padded 
softly and cautiously down them lest she should hear 
their preparations for departure or know that they 
were going. She did not actually hear them departing, 
but she knew she was alone. She realized that clearly. 

Then one evening, when Angus came in, they told 
him they had found rooms. 

There was the first fire of the year burning in the 
drawing-room and they were gathered round it, Miss 
Proctor, Papa Pip, and Little Mr. Cole. { 

The fire made red flickerings in their faces. They 
looked like a group of anxious, friendly little gnomes. 

“That’s splendid!” he congratulated them. “Avaunt! 
the Future!” He paused, aware of lack of response. 
“Is anything wrong?” 

Papa Pip shook his funny pink head with its absurd 
fringe of curly silver hair. 

“Tom Ripon has come back.” 

“Who is he?” 

“A communist,” said Papa Pip, and shut his mouth 
like a trap. 

“Mr. O’Rane took him in when he came out of 
prison after the war,” said Miss Proctor slowly. “It 
was the only thing I think he ever did that wasn’t 
quite nice, not quite wise. He used to preach in Hyde 
Park, and they found a lot of pamphlets in his room 


136 The House of Broken Dreams 

trying to make munition makers go on strike. He was 
quite notorious. A Bolshevik and a conscientious ob¬ 
jector, you know. I never thought it was quite wise 
to let him come here. He was very, very ill. Miss 
Fannie nursed him. ,, 

“He’s a human explosive,” said little Mr. Cole. “I 
mistrust him profoundly, profoundly.” 

Angus sat down and lit a cigarette. Absurd to 
say he was afraid! 

“A nasty young man,” said Papa Pip. 

“I suppose he was in love with Miss Fannie,” 
said Angus quietly. 

Of course he knew! He had a sudden vision of 
Fannie when one was ill; kind eyes, little hands pat¬ 
ting and smoothing, and her voice, clear and kind and 
mothering. Fannie reading aloud with the sunlight 
on her hair, Fannie arranging flowers, the kind, grac¬ 
ious offices of the sick-room. 

“He took advantage of her womanly sympathy,” 
said Miss Proctor. 

“He was mad about her,” said little Mr. Cole. 

Angus’s ordered thoughts broke up in disordered 
confusion. When he had entered the room they had 
been in their usual quiet, neat sequence, ready to use 
and put back; now they tumbled pell-mell, red-hot, 
pointed, hopeless. He lost himself hopelessly among 
them, that quiet, cool, administrative self that had 
always had the useful quality of standing apart. He 
was hideously frightened, he was angry, he was filled 
with blind, unreasoning, impotent hate. 

“He’ll have to clear out,” said Angus Reid. “One 
can’t have that sort of swine knocking about.” 


The House of Broken Dreams 137 

Papa Pip put his hand on his arm. His old blue 
eyes were reading. After all, it did not matter. It 
was there for the world to read, ineffaceable. 

“Quietly does it, son,” he said. “Quietly does it. 
Fannie’s not a girl to be driven, and this Ripon fellow’s 
not a fool. He’s got a way with him, my son, a way 
with him.” 

“He’s changed since he was here last,” said Miss 
Proctor. 

“Some fool left him all his money,” said little Mr. 
Cole. “Some fool old lady. He’s rich. He is respect¬ 
able. He’s trying to reconcile his old theories with 
his new possessions and finds it a hard job. He’s 
come back to Fannie to help him. He’s clever enough 
to claim only service. She never could deny that. It’s 
the great heart of her. Before there was his health 
to mend, now there’s his conscience. He’s got his right 
of entry as he had before . . . he’s in trouble.” 

The war of his thoughts went on. He was oddly 
enough among them, being pummelled, hot and angry 
and totally unfamiliar to himself. 

“The police hate him,” said little Papa Pip. “When 
he came out of prison, it got out he’d found sanctuary 
here, and there was a hostile demonstration outside. 
The police had to disperse them, but they didn’t hurry. 
He was frightened. He had whisky-and-soda after 
whisky-and-soda. ’ ’ 

“It was a horrid time,” said little Mr. Cole. 

“He’s a snob really,” said the little poet unexpect¬ 
edly. “He’s one of those that revile the things they 
secretly long to possess. I found that out. He’s smug 
too, a Philistine.” 

“He sounds an unpleasant fellow.” 


138 The House of Broken Dreams 

“A dangerous fellow,” said Papa Pip. 

“Fll have to clear him out.” 

“I wouldn’t do that,” said the little poet. “It’ll give 
him fighting-ground. He wants that. Don t give it 
to him. He’s a megalomaniac.” 

“A mego—what?” said Miss Proctor. 

“I mean,” said the little poet quietly, “he must ex¬ 
press himself in terms of violence because it’s the only 
means open to him. He hasn’t culture or money or 
position or caste. He hadn’t in the old days. He s 
ego-centric. All things revolve round himself. He 
lives in the limelight. He’s the stuff of which martyrs 
were made in the old days. He must express himself 
violently to feel that he even exists.” 

“A dangerous customer,” said Papa Pip. 

“He ought to go to Russia,” Miss Proctor’s gentle, 
worried voice broke in. “They’re more used to his 
sort there.” 

“We’ll send him somehow,” Angus reassured her. 

She shook her head. “You won’t if he means to 
stay, Mr. Reid.” 

“He’ll soon grasp the fact,” said Mr. Cole, “that 
you and Fannie don’t see alike, and he’ll work on it. 
It’s just the sort of situation he’d revel in. Don’t 
give him the satisfaction. I don’t suppose he’d ever 
met a decent girl like Fannie on terms of intimacy 
before he came here. It appealed to the snob in him. 
I came across him one day gloating over the history 
of the house of O’Rane. You know that big green 
book. Of course he sneered. He had to. It was part 
of his social make-up. I knew; it was a sort of sick 
envy. If he hadn’t been downtrodden himself he 


The House of Broken Dreams 139 

would have trodden down mercilessly. You know the 
type, but clever, Reid, and cunning, and a way with 
him. He used to talk to her. He's got a history like 
a realist's novel, a struggle up from the slums. He's 
made her cry . . . stories of the kids, you know. 
He wants Fannie." 

“He wants her?" repeated Angus. 

They looked at him. 

“Why, my dear, of course," said Miss Proctor 
gently, “that's what he’s come back for." 

11 

They saw each other like shadows in the limpid 
increep of the evening light, like clear soft water it 
brushed between them, separating them. 

Fannie let down her wiry, stivery, copper-coloured 
hair and began to brush it with slow swishing sounds. 

“I feel we're not parting right," said Kane. “I feel 
it and I can’t express it." 

It's because we oughtn't to be parting," said Fan¬ 
nie. “And you oughtn't to be parting, you and 
Bobbie ..." 

“I don’t know," Kane objected. 

“You don't know. What do you mean? You love 
Bobbie?" 

“That's it," agreed Kane thoughtfully. “There’s 
a sort of joy in proving what you know, just to your¬ 
self, there's a joy in it." She sat forward on the little 
chair and gripped her hands. “Oh! Fannie, I want 
to talk to you." 

“I'm listening," said Fannie. 


140 The House of Broken Dreams 

That was it! She was there listening. Funny how 
difficult it was to talk when people were expressly listen¬ 
ing, to catch the shine and glitter and dance of one’s 
thoughts and pin them down in words. 

“You see ...” began Kane, and suddenly she 
broke off. “Oh! Fannie, if you were only in love too, 
it would be so easy ... so much easier.” 

Fanny almost caught her breath; here was another 
one scurrying away, crying that there was nothing to 
catch hold of when the whole of her was passionately 
outstretched to them, quivering for mental contact. 
She had a moment of nervous panic; she must catch 
this little sister quickly, quickly before she followed 
Judy and Pat and the pensioners into the unknowable. 

“You’re being sent away from Bobbie to-morrow 
for a whole year,” she said incredulously. “You won’t 
see him for a year. You can’t be glad, Kane!” 

“It hurts like hell,” hesitated Kane, “but underneath 
there’s something . . . something that isn’t sorry. 
I’ve been so close to Bobbie ever since I’ve known him 
that I haven’t had time to be with myself and see how 
I am taking it all. In love you lose yourself, and then 
after you come back to yourself and find you haven’t 
altered as you believed and trusted, you’ve just gone 
dead. You believed you blended just because you 
didn’t count with yourself, and then you come to and 
find you count frightfully and you’ve lost the right 
to.” 

“But when you love a person you want to be with 
them always and always.” 

“Oh, no!” said Kane, “Oh, no! Oh, no!” 

“Then I don’t understand,” said Fannie. 


The House of Broken Dreams 141 

The silence between them grew like a barrier being 
slowly built by malicious hands. Their process of 
thought became more and more obscure to each other, 
soon it would be quite invisible. 

“I love Bobbie.” Kane was quiet. “I shall always 
love him. That’s knowledge, not just belief, but I 
want to be set on my feet and find him and myself. 
I want to think quietly. You don’t think when you’re 
in love. I’ve talked it out with Bobbie. He agrees that 
Angus is right to insist on separation. We have the 
inner vision, but Angus has the clear, ordinary outside 
vision of us and we shall come back to that. Love is 
made up of two things, the things that you yourself 
know and the things that other people see. When 
you’ve been together long enough to get used to it 
you begin to be conscious of the outside vision and 
the things that other people see. You must have seen 
yourself first and you must get away from the person 
you love to do that.” 

“So you want to get away from Bobbie?” 

“I want to get by myself and see Bobbie. Bobbie 
and I have talked things out. He’s going to work 
like a nigger while I’m away, and I am going to try 
and develop, broaden out. I am going to acquire a 
jumping-off ground for life.” 

“Your life here hasn’t provided one?” 

“Oh, no, Fannie! How could it ? It’s been beauti¬ 
ful and picturesque and fantastic and . . . and 
sweet.” 

There it was again; that air of gentle, loving, toler¬ 
ant indulgence towards a child’s fairy-tale. It hurt! 
It hurt unbearably. Impossible to sit quietly and be 


,142 The House of Broken Dreams 

stung by it. She began to plait her hair for want of 
something to do. 

“So I’m glad I’m going,” said Kane with a half¬ 
sigh. She rose, then sat down again. 

“Fannie, when I’m gone you’re not going to let 
Tom Ripon stay on. He isn’t ill now and he isn’t 
even poor, and he’s rather a horrid creature. He was 
always rather horrid in his fiery days, but now he’s 
been damped down by money he’s horrider. Angus 
Reid loathes him.” 

“I’m afraid I don’t find that a sufficient reason 
for turning him out.” 

“I wish you wouldn’t take that attitude.” 

“What attitude?” 

“That attitude towards Angus Reid.” 

In the almost-darkness Kane could hear Fannie 
slipping out of her clothes, slipping into her dressing- 
gown. Her voice, seeming to flower stiffly upwards 
as she hunted for her bedroom slippers, was cold and 
tranquil. 

“You have all enthusiastically accepted the lives and 
careers Angus Reid has planned for you. I have not. 
You have gone your ways without consulting me in the 
least. Please leave me alone in mine. I don’t under¬ 
stand any of you.” 

“But you must know that Angus is crazy about you. 
You must know he’s in love with you.” 

There was a new emotion in the room. Kane could 
feel it. She knew in the silence that it was there and 
she had brought it there and they were no longer alone. 
She strained her imagination to get vision of it. It 
bumbled there between 4 :hem, a weighty, homeless 


The House of Broken Dreams 143 

thing that had just been born of her impulsive words. 
She was nervous of it. 

“You are absurd/’ Fannie said. 

She sat on the edge of the bed with her feet dangling. 

“Is Bobbie going to see you off to-morrow ?” 

“Everyone is . . . Mr. Reid, Miss Proctor, Papa 
Pip, everyone. Fannie, are you?” 

“No, dear, I’m not.” 

“But Fannie, I want you,” the tears came; they 
were sisters; the mental atmosphere between them be¬ 
came hot, overcrowded, stifling with emotional mem¬ 
ories. They sought and clutched each other’s hands 
like little children. 

“I don’t want to go like this.” Kane sobbed like 
a little girl. “I do love you all ... I do.” 

Fannie stroked her hair. Once more her voice gen¬ 
tled and mothered. 

“Dear, I shall say good-bye to you here. I’m giving 
you up in my mind, like a mother, to new thoughts 
and new things and new ways. I wish you well, dear. 
I think perhaps you’re right; you see farther, 
straighter. You’re young to marry, and as you say, 
you haven’t any experience. I couldn’t have chosen 
anyone nicer than Mr. and Mrs. Fellowes and their 
daughter. I think they’re delightful people. I mean 
it. I feel gratitude to Mr. Reid for them. I do really. 
I’m glad for you to go, but I don’t want to see you off. 
Dear, I shall be so out of the picture. I want Bobbie 
to come and see me often. I’ve given you up to him, 
that makes a bond. I like Bobbie, an awfully gallant 
little gentleman. We shall miss you horribly.” 

“And, Fannie, you’ll send that horrid man away?” 


144 The House of Broken Dreams 

“He’s not horrid, Kane, only dreadfully unhappy, 
and he’s going soon. He can’t reconcile six thousand 
pounds a year with his conscience, and he hasn’t the 
courage to give it up. He’s made a virtue and a career 
of poverty and down-troddenness and now he’s been 
robbed of it. I’m sorry for him. He really suffers, 
Kane. The spleen and hatred of the upper classes he 
lived on was really a secret, hidden passion for power 
and respectability and esteem from his fellow men. He 
doesn’t know what to do.” 

“I’ll bet he doesn’t give up the six thousand pounds. 
Do you know what he’s become, Fannie? A creepy, 
crawly, toading little snob, a grinder of the face of the 
poor.” 

“I know he’s terribly mixed in his feelings. We 
have long, long talks. He can’t compromise, that’s 
his trouble. I wish you’d try and think kindly of him, 
Kane; he really suffers.” 

When her sister had gone, Fannie lay very still; then 
suddenly she smiled ingratiatingly, invitingly into the 
darkness; and the bumbling new idea crept nearer and 
nearer until it was upon her and she caught her breath 
oddly, and laughed. 


hi 

There was Autumn outside and rain, and inside 
the wet stuffiness that is broken up with cold miserable 
draughts. 

The house was tremendously quiet. It held that 
odd quiet perpetually now, as if someone had just gone 
who would be missed to-morrow. 


The House of Broken Dreams 145 

They had all departed to see Kane off except Fannie. 
She had been firm, composed, smiling. “Good-bye, 
honey, and God bless you, and have a lovely time;” 
an intentional and determined glossing over of the real 
significance of the break, its finality. 

Funny how quiet made one listen. One could be 
quieter and more isolated in a noise sometimes. Queer 
how the old business of life had segregated her in the 
past and now the slowing up had invaded everything. 
The natural hush became unnatural, making her rest¬ 
less as if with the consciousness of something repressed. 

She was glad to see Tom Ripon, glad of the smell 
of his expensive cigarette. 

“Beastly day,” he said. 

They stared together at the fine rain. The flowers 
in Papa Pip’s garden were heavy with it, against the 
trees it made a slanted wire mesh. 

“You keep thinking the sun will come out,” he said, 
“and it doesn’t.” 

“It will,” she said with an effort. It was like keep¬ 
ing a ball up when you were very, very tired. They 
tossed words meaninglessly at one another, backwards 
and forwards. 

He was long and lean, with eyes like burnt holes in 
a blanket. He spoke with a restless hunger. In some 
queer way he suggested a man who continually 
stretches out and is continually thwarted. 

“Kane gone?” he said. 

“Yes.” 

“There’s something of the stoic about you,” he sub¬ 
mitted. “Something of the stoic.” 

“You know”—the confidence was suddenly squeezed 


146 The House of Broken Dreams 

out of her for no reason at all; she watched it with a 
queer outraged feeling as if he had robbed her of it. 
“You know, things aren’t the same with Kane and 
Judy and all of them: we don’t understand each other 
any more.” 

He rose and drummed his fingers on the glass with 
his back to her. 

“That’s it,” he said. “You go on or they go on . . . 
nothing lasts, nothing. That’s what gets you, the 
ghastly impermanency of human relationship . . . 
the going on. We call it by great echoing, heart-warm¬ 
ing names, this age-old pathetic effort to cling on 'mar¬ 
riage, the blood tie, friendship’—it is the unquenchable 
desire to feel real—static for a moment.” 

“I’d rather you didn’t ...” she pleaded. “Not 
this morning when one is rather ...” 

“One always is,” he said. “But one doesn’t always 
realize it, Fannie.” 

Silence and slanting rain and the faint-coloured 
glitter of her little ornaments, her little orange bowls 
and purple vases, and that queer feeling of being some¬ 
how caged beside his cage, and his hungry, rather 
pathetic outreaching to her. 

“They’ll never come back,” she said. 

“No one ever does,” he was sombre. “It’s only 
just got you, this consciousness of eternal loneliness, 
but I was born with it and born with the eternal, haunt¬ 
ing desire to break it too.” 

“But one day you’ll marry.” 

He looked at her with his sudden attractive smile, 
he was an oddly narrow, pointed fellow, the jaw, the 
straight nose, the tips of his ears. 


The House of Broken Dreams 147 

“The devices and desires of our own hearts,” he 
quoted suddenly. “It’s all in that, the unrest and 
misery of the world . . . ‘we have followed too 
much the devices and desires of our own hearts.’ D’you 
see what I mean, Fannie ? Psycho-analysts meddle and 
muck with the seedlings, but the root of it all is there 
in the Bible and the prayer book, big and ugly and im¬ 
perishable and world-old. If I could lose this miser¬ 
able muddle that is me in something or somebody! In 
my heart I know I could find permanence in ultra¬ 
respectability and convention, in snobbishness. All 
the violence of my socialism was merely thwarted greed 
and need of those things in a sense. Yet I have seen 
the other side and the pictures abide with me. I have 
warred with that side against the things I wanted 
and the section of society with which I yearned to be 
incorporated . . . and so the war goes on in me.” 

“Yes, I know.” 

“I ought to give this money up,” he said. “Yet I 
gained the ideas that prompt this in a cause that I 
championed solely because of my conscious hunger 
for money. I cannot give up a thing and then go on 
fighting happily because I have not got it.” 

“No, you can’t,” she said. 

“My whole nature is passionately middle-class,” he 
said. “That’s the truth of it; and when they kicked 
me out because of my coat, just like a little boy, I 
turned and spat at them. I made a business of spitting. 
I found other spitters. I placed myself at their head, 
I made a virtue of spitting. They would not say, all 
those respectable, established people, ‘Here comes our 


148 The House of Broken Dreams 

friend Tom Ripon,’ so they should say, ‘Here comes 
our enemy/ Recognition at all costs.” 

“I think you are too hard on yourself.” 

“Funny,” he said. “All my dreams ever since I can 
remember in those horrible flats in Long Acre, all my 
life, have been of possession. Not the gold coach nor 
the V. C.; possession of things men took for granted. 
As I denied and violated them they grew, as I thrust 
them away they crept closer. Visiting cards, properly 
engraved visiting cards, the sort you leave on people, 
‘Mr. and Mrs. Thomas Ripon’ and then ‘Mrs. Ripon’ 
—you know. I’ve wanted to see them and have some¬ 
one leaving them about, maids taking them on silver 
salvers. I’m always seeing it . . . like a girl who can 
sing a bit hears herself sing to a great audience, or 
feels a fellow kiss her. Petty, isn’t it? A fellow, 
bitten by bugs and dreaming of engraved visiting 
cards 1” 

“They were representative,” she suggested. 

“Another thing,” he said. “I wanted a baby in a 
large white pram and a nurse in white pique, an ex¬ 
pensive nurse from an institution. They’ve got up 
and gone away when I’ve sat down on the same seat 
in the Park.” 

Mental desolation gripped Fannie. She felt life 
flatten out round her, become suddenly horizonless 
and their two cages were set alone in the flatness 
side by side, hers and Tom Ripon’s. 

He looked at Farftiie and he saw Fannie through the 
room, as it were. The room was her incense, her 
atmosphere. They made of her in his eyes less a 
woman than a suddenly vouchsafed attainment. The 


The House of Broken Dreams 149 

soft femininity of the little white and green room, 
the refinement that made it an Eldorado. And the rain 
outside helped, the rain that seemed to shut him in 
with her in the warmth and the cosiness and the inde¬ 
finable state of well-being and comfort. What he 
had sought was here cradled in this little room. 

He looked at her and he saw that she was fine and 
dainty, and her little nails were pink and polished and 
her hair had sheen. Next to her skin were soft, fine 
clothes, and it had never known anything else. He 
thought of this without a vestige of coarseness or 
passion, but with the utmost pleasure, as if they were 
jewels on an idol. He thought of the women he had 
known and never loved, the women who had revolted 
him by their very approachableness, whose lack of 
reserve had seemed to his fastidiousness disgusting 
license; they lumbered through his memory an ugly 
humiliating procession. 

He fixed his eyes on the books; they were old French 
authors, old French poets, and the sagas of Gals¬ 
worthy. His imagination knew them, they crept from 
their covers, Watteau figures, panniered; ruffled gal¬ 
lants; and the slow moving mellowness of Galsworthy 
. . . life delicately coloured, purged, silted, a life of 
niceness, of refinement, that was what the whole room 
promised him, that lay waiting, like a hidden jewel, 
behind the reserve, the tranquility, of Fannie. 

She was gazing out of the window, and her big grey 
eyes were unfurnished. She was apparently neither 
listening, watching, nor thinking. She appeared to 
hang there for him, a suddenly priceless embellish¬ 
ment to his life. 


150 The House of Broken Dreams 

So utterly, so restful a lady she was . . . that was 
his thought. 

In his mind for one breathless moment he caught her 
up, he waved her exultantly in the face of all those 
uglies who had peopled his past. 

He walked to the window and stood staring out at 
the sodden garden, and said clearly and slowly above 
the frantic beating of his heart: 

“One thinks of those poor old devils this coming 
winter.’' 

“Please!” she protested. “Please!” 

She would take it like an aristocrat, the pictures 
he knew his words etched for her, hunger and cold 
for the beloved old. He, at her age, would have been 
blown into fatuous, blasphemous blustering at the men¬ 
tion of it, striving thus to beat down the sense of his 
own utter impotence. That was his way, to rage 
against the inevitable. 

“They’re no damn good those old people, and that 
fellow Reid knows it,” he said. “They’ll go under. 
They’ve got rooms and enough money between them 
to pay the rent for a week. Did you know?” 

“No,” she said. “They didn’t tell me.” 

She was pale, bleak, withdrawn from him. 

“You ought to do something, Fannie,” he said. 

“What can I do? I have begged. I have implored 
them to stay. I told you how he talked to them. I 
told you.” He knew she had much more to say, then 
her words suddenly fell down into a hopeless, bot¬ 
tomless silence. He did not break it, he let it lengthen 
and gloom over. 

“Do you think it doesn’t hurt? Do you think it 


The House of Broken Dreams 


151 

doesn’t keep me awake at night ? Do you think I don’t 
know that it’s like sending out a bunch of helpless 
babies to fend for themselves? Mr. Reid has made 
their departure an ... an affair of honour, a challenge 
that they simply had to accept. The moment we get 
any real cold weather Miss Proctor’s asthma will 
come back. Oh! do you think I don’t know?” 

4 ‘Why won’t they stay?” 

“Because they know I have only a hundred and 
fifty a year.” 

“Is that all?” 

“That’s all. We’ve all got a hundred and fifty a 
year, and the others are using it for . . . for their 
education.” 

“You can’t blame them.” 

“I don’t blame them- They shall have what I 

can spare.” 

“They won’t touch it.” 

“I shall let this house furnished.” 

“And if the children want to come back?” 

“They won’t want to come back.” 

He said: “You see things clearly, Fannie, the writ¬ 
ing on the wall.” 

“Once you see it you’ve seen it; you know what I 
mean, Tom; curtains aren’t any good. It’s there all 
the time, behind.” 

“You can’t ask young people to live in a fairy-tale.” 

“Unless it’s their own, and then they live in it and 
shut you out.” There was no resentment in her voice, 
only a dull acquiescence to an accepted fact. 

“Suppose,” he said, very quietly, “you could keep 



152 The House of Broken Dreams 

them all on here in peace and comfort, Papa Pip, 
Miss Proctor and little Mr. Cole?” 

“Liberty is heady stuff,” she said vaguely. “I’ve 
seen that this month. That is what it is to them, Tom 
—liberty.” 

“When they had a little of it.” 

“I know, but then it’s too late.” 

“Suppose you were able to stand ready?” 

“What is the good of supposing, Tom, it only 
hurts. Do you think I haven’t supposed and supposed? 
The early hours of the morning are the worst for 
that. I’ve found out.” 

“Wait, Pm coming to it.” 

He stared out of the window, and the wind veered 
suddenly and blew the rain towards him. It became 
connected in his brain with the chill of his old outcast 
life, trying to touch his new security and promise. 

“If I could spend my money like that,” he said 
aloud, “I wouldn’t feel a renegade. It would end that 
absurd war between my knowledge of life and my 
dreams of it. I could reconcile my conscience with 
my possessions.” 

He stared out at the rain and the Autumn, and 
became increasingly, exultantly conscious of the 
warmth, the refinement, the peaceful security behind 
him. It became for him a warming glow to which 
he could turn any moment; he delayed solely that 
he might enjoy the consciousness of deliberate pro¬ 
traction. 

“You see,” he said, “both they and I are at your 
mercy. We crave your charity . . . both they and I.” 

She saw dimly then, and grew frightened like a 


The House of Broken Dreams 153 

child who wakes in the dark. He did not speak of 
her. He was clever there. He spoke only of himself, 
so that her mind turned from scared contemplation of 
herself to him, and he was able to reassure her. 

“It is difficult to make you understand the war in 
me,” he said. “I know the poverty and the gall and 
the suffering, I have been in it and of it, and while I 
succoured it, I hated and despised it, while I chained 
my body most violently to it my mind was planning 
ways of escape. I fought for freedom because the 
sufferings of my body were bound up in theirs, my 
deprivations were theirs. I fought for the poor only 
because their poverty angered me because it was also 
mine. If I had been rich it would never have touched 
me, I knew that. My trouble is that I’ve wanted to be 
a good fellow with other fellows. The top class cast 
me out because I didn’t come up to social and financial 
standards. I tried to climb by reading and by night 
schools. You know the story, Fannie. My insufferable 
conceit won’t let me be happy, or even restful, unless 
I feel a good fellow. Now this money and my pre¬ 
vious educational efforts have placed me in the top 
class—and I am disqualified for good fellowship with 
the lower . . . I become a traitor. If you will let me 
spend some of my money securing these people I can 
reconcile my conscience with my success. You’re not 
understanding.” 

“Yes,” said Fannie, “I’m understanding.” 

“Save us,” he said. “Those old people and myself. 
Our salvation is in your hands.” 

She was frightfully quiet, her eyes, her hands, her 
voice. She did not pretend to misunderstand. 


1154 The House of Broken Dreams 

“You’re asking me to marry you, Tom?” 

‘Tm asking you to marry me. With my six thou¬ 
sand a year we’ll make a home here for the old people. 
Incorporate me in your life, Fannie.” 

“I know,” she said, “but one doesn’t, Tom, one 
doesn’t incorporate. That’s it. If it were only in¬ 
corporation.” 

“But there’s no need to alter anything, and they 
won’t feel any compunction about staying on.” 

“But you and I will be altered . . . and can we alter 
towards each other? Oh! do you know what I mean?” 

“All my life I’ve wanted to be like you, Fannie. 
How many men can free themselves from masculine 
convention sufficiently to say to their women . . . 
make me like yourself?” 

“I don’t know,” she murmured, “I don’t know. 
I’m sure I don’t know.” 

She had a feeling that Angus Reid was knocking 
at a door and she was keeping him out and wanting 
him in, that was it. Her thoughts flew like startled 
birds bewildering her. 

Adroitly Tom Ripon steered her away from them¬ 
selves. The coolness of his eye, the schooled coolness 
of his voice made the discussion almost impersonal. 

“All your life you have been a refuge,” he smiled. 
“It’s become a habit with you. We find our happiness 
in our habits after a time.” 

“Yes,” she said, “I know. I know.” 

Skimming thoughts, wheeling thoughts, and limp¬ 
ing, low flying thoughts like wounded birds . . . and 
the invisible beater—Angus Reid. She knew he was 
at the back of them all, that they flew because he 


The House of Broken Dreams 155 

beat them up. It made her suddenly angry, suddenly 
afraid. 

“Take me,” he said. “I'm so tired of myself.” 

He knelt down beside her. He was like a tired 
little boy who had been ill; listless and weak some¬ 
how. He looked up at her with his odd, bright eyes. 

“I can’t promise, Tom,” she said. “I don’t promise 
anything. I’ll have to think it over.” 

“It isn’t as if you don’t know me.” 

“But I don’t, Tom, that’s it. A friend and a pos¬ 
sible husband . . . they’re different.” 

He was passive, almost apathetic. She could feel 
him sagging towards her. She could feel her pity 
projecting to catch him; and yet he was heavy on it. 

“It’s a way out,” he said. 

There was cunning behind his apparent simplicity. 
He knew his Fannie. He challenged her love for the 
crowd she’d mothered. She lifted some of the clutter¬ 
ing personal issues that she might see the way more 
clearly in relation to its safety for all those others. 

“I’ll have to think,” she reiterated. 

“We’re trained to think of love as an instinctive 
thing,” he said. “I don’t think it is, unless there’s 
tremendous physical attraction.” He brushed that pur¬ 
posely aside, having raised it only in order to brush 
it aside and with it a certain vague dark questioning 
in her eyes. He saw them lighten. “We have a mutual 
mission,” he said, “that should breed companionship 
and affection. Things may not always go right with 
Kane and Judy and Pat.” Here again he was clever. 
He sought to nip none of the thoughts he saw growing 
in her. “They’ll get over their prejudice against me,” 


156 The House of Broken Dreams 

he added quielty and reassuringly. “And they can 
always come home to you.” 

“I can’t. One couldn’t, Tom ... not now. I 
mean, it’s a big thing, marriage.” 

Odd the feeling that Angus Reid was there and she 
was talking at him, challenging him. The feeling 
grew until it became an emotional excitement which 
she had to control and hide away from the man kneel¬ 
ing before her. He did not seem to matter at all, that 
was the inexplicable, amazing thing. He was merely 
the shield behind which she made thrusts at an adver¬ 
sary who was not there. Inexplicable the very riot of 
stimulation he roused in her. It whirled at 
the very thought of him; and underneath the heady 
anger lay something she could not fathom, something 
she was afraid of because it lived there close at hand 
and had no name or form, but was just there, neither 
a promise nor a menace. 

“What are you going to do with your life when they 
all go?” 

“I don’t know.” 

He looked at the soft things in the gentle little 
room, faded some of them, old, even a little prim. 
He looked at Fannie’s instep. It was high. Its height 
gave him extraordinary pleasure. Somewhere he had 
read that arched insteps denoted breeding and that 
water should be able to trickle under them. It all seemed 
part of a vague, deferred inheritance. 

He took her hands and buried his face in them. 

Angus Reid, coming to tell Fannie that Kane had 
gone off happily, found him with his head buried on 
her lap. 


Chapter VII 


i 

TT was like “nerves,” this appalling restlessness that 
drove Angus out into the chilly streets, into hot 
cinemas and the cheerful blaring raucousness of music- 
halls. With him he carried, like a snail its shell, his 
new-found loneliness and depression. 

And this restlessness was companioned by a hot, 
endless hatred of familiar things. He felt if he could 
have got far enough away from them, in surroundings 
sufficiently alien, he could achieve freedom from Fannie 
and the eternal surmise that obsessed him, but again 
and again he was driven back to the quiet house in 
the dreaming square, where Miss Proctor and Papa Pip 
and the little poet still lingered, with their minds on 
chintzes and chances and the little nest of rooms they 
had found. 

And Tom Ripon was always there, very, very quiet 
and grave and steady, eating himself into the atmos¬ 
phere of the house with little quiet acts and gestures 
of homeliness and domesticity; not lover-ways to arouse 
Angus’s instant antagonism, but in some subtle man¬ 
ner husband-ways, nothing flauntingly possessive, but 
rather the air of having possessed for a long time. 

And Angus went in to see them, and came away 
again soon with the nostalgia that he suffered for' 
Fannie enriched and intensified sharply. 

i57 


.158 The House of Broken Dreams 

He could not keep away, and yet when he was 
there he could not stay. They had not that warm, volu¬ 
minous shield against him that lovers use, they did 
not suggest that definite ensconcing of the newly mar¬ 
ried; there was something so placid, so gentle-toned 
in their manner and their ways to each other as to 
suggest a mellowed, long-established intimacy. This 
was achieved quite unconsciously by Fannie out of the 
conscious and never slackened restraint of Tom Ripon; 
no word, no gesture was ever allowed to escape that 
should break up the placidity of their camaraderie, 
the reassuring tranquility of their relationship. 

Angus sounded Miss Proctor, alternating daily be¬ 
tween the purchase of goldfish or a canary for the com¬ 
munal sitting-room. 

“Look here, is there anything between those two?” 

“Of course,” she said. 

“What?” 

“An understanding that only he understands.” 

“You mean he’s going to marry her?” 

“Without her knowing it.” 

“Look here, Miss Proctor, that’s mad!” He stared 
at her. “I mean . . . that’s rubbish, absolutely bilge; 
you talk as if he were going to kidnap her.” 

“He has,” said the little lady. “She’s drugged, 
too, drugged by the atmosphere he’s deliberately creat¬ 
ing. I told you he was clever, long ago. When men 
are adaptable there is nothing, nothing they cannot 
do with women. There are so few adaptable men, so 
few, that women think it is they who have adapted 
them . . . and that they can go on and on. He never 
obtrudes himself. He is just there, and she thinks he 


The House of Broken Dreams 159 

will always be just there and she will always be just 
there. She’s building on that; and his whole attitude 
is an unspoken guarantee that it shall be so. I doubt 
if he has spoken to her of love, or kissed her; he 
keeps her lulled by his own impersonality, his unob¬ 
trusive helpfulness and sympathy. He hides his own 
need of her, which would frighten her, beneath the 
cool mirage of her need for him. ,, 

“Can’t you help?” 

“I can’t help, my dear,” she said. “Thin spinsters 
can’t help with young girls, that’s the truth. They 
can’t believe in them. I don’t like Tom Ripon, Angus; 
I told you long ago I want to get out of the house.” 

“But you can’t leave Fannie in it with him.” 

“I know. He wouldn’t have that. He’s a passion* 
ate conventionalist. They’ll marry very quietly; that’s 
his keynote, quietness.” 

“Can’t you do anything? I mean . . . look here, 
Miss Proctor, at the back of it there must be some 
reason.” 

“If you are feeling forsaken, desperately lonely, 
misused, as Fannie is, isn’t it more reassuring to think 
there is no reason why you shouldn’t marry a man 
and help him?” 

“I believe Fannie thinks you would all stay here 
if she married him. He has got money.” 

“We can disabuse her mind very quickly. You can’t 
do anything at all, any step you take will precipitate 
her into his arms. I think he’s waiting for you to 
take the step. I think he’s even counting on you to 
do so.” 

“She hates me,” he said. 


160 The House of Broken Dreams 

“She thinks she does, that’s worse.” 

They looked at each other. 

“You can’t do anything,” she said. “It’s hard, dear 
boy, but you can’t do anything.” 

He carried his restlessness to Marjorie Moneypenny, 
knitting blue jumpers beside a wood fire. He told 
her all the news of Kane, of Judy, of Pat, he read her 
bits of their letters. They were gay letters that brought 
light to the dark little room and an involuntary smile 
to his lips. 

“Well, they all seem jolly happy,” she said cheerfully 
and prosaically. “It’s a good thing.” 

“You know that Bolshevik chap I told you about,” 
he said slowly, experimentally. “Ripon, Tom Ripon.” 

She was counting under her breath. 

“M’, m’, m’.” 

“He wants to marry Fannie O’Rane.” 

She looked up quickly, then down. It gave him an 
odd feeling, as if she photographed him off guard. 

“Well, things are panning out wonderfully,” she 
said. 

“But the man’s a swine!” he burst out. 

“You’re not her guardian, Angus.” 

“That isn’t the point.” 

He was aware of her healthy gleaming brightness 
almost like an affront, the gilt of her absurd hair, 
the pink-and-whiteness of her, the jewel gleam of her 
vivid blue eye; it seemed forged to launch just that 
one quiet, pertinent question that got under his de¬ 
fences. 

“Well, what is the point, Angus?” 

“Goodness knows!” he said irritably. 


The House of Broken Dreams 161 

When he got back there were two piteous letters, 
one from Pat and one from Kane. Kane wrote im¬ 
pulsively, reckless of grammar and coherency. “Fam 
nie says she’s going to marry that stoat Ripon. They 
are going to live on in the square and make a home for 
the old people. Oh! Angus, she doesn’t, she doesn’t 
really know the least little tiny thing about life! You 
must stop it, somehow; you’ve got to stop it! ! I 
know Ripon. We’ve seen him quiet and smooth and 
sleepy before. Underneath that quiet smooth lies all 
sorts of cheap mental bric-a-brac she’d loathe to live 
with! Oh! you must do something. He’s mean-souled, 
and Fannie isn’t that. I know she’s over age, but 
you’ve got to think of something! My goodness! 
you’ve got to! I’m writing Bobbie to go over and 
see you. You’ve got to stop this absurd thing! The 
old people don’t want to live with her. They want 
to be on their own. I mean, it’s plain truth, so few 
people want sanctuary, Angus. I’m writing Fannie. 
There must be something low and disgusting in Ripon’s 
life you can find out. Men like that always do have 
something like that. Their very ways of working 
and eating are different, Tom Ripon’s and Fannie’s. 
I know you don’t understand, but all that is terribly 
important to a girl. You’ve been so splendid about 
everything, Angus, we do look to you to be splendid 
about this. Fannie wanted a guardian more than any 
of us, if poor old Daddy had only known. Oh! Angus, 
she’s lived all her life in a fairy-tale and now she 
can’t see it’s the ugly toad who’s asking her and not 
the fairy prince.” ' 


162 


The House of Broken Dreams 


Pat wrote briefly on a page in prep, time, but in 
equal distress. 

Angus put on his hat and went across the square. 

There was an unwonted gravity about the little 
Punchinello who opened the door. 

“Is Miss O’Rane in?” 

“She’s in, sir.” 

“Is she alone?” 

“Mr. Ripon’s with her, sir. There’s been a bit of 
an upset, sir.” 

“Over Mr. Ripon. They won’t live with him.” 

“With Ripon?” 

“Papa Pip, Miss Proctor and Mr. Cole. He had 
’em all in the drawing-room this afternoon, told them 
he was going to marry Miss Fannie and make a home 
for all of them.” 

“I see,” said Angus slowly. 

“I’m not staying either, along of him. If you hear 
of a place, sir . ..” 

“Where is she?” 

“In her own study, sir.” 

He saw the danger of it all. Everyone had turned 
against Tom Ripon. He had become the under-dog. 
Her life had been a happy, conscious ministration to 
their needs. Clever, clever, cunning Ripon! 

On the stairs he met Miss Proctor. The little woman 
had been crying. She drew him into the drawing¬ 
room. 

“You’ve heard?” she said. 

“I’ve come about it.” 

“He had us all in the drawing-room,” her voice 
quivered with indignation. “Oh! you need a real gen- 


The House of Broken Dreams 163 

tleman to offer you the bread of charity and yet make 
it seem like cake. Of course, we did exactly what 
he wanted us to ... I see that now. We flared up 
against him. She had the letters from Kane and 
Pat and Judy beforehand. I didn’t know that until 
after. Ripon was clever. He sat there as if he were 
stunned by it all. I heard him say: ‘I’ve made a mis¬ 
take. They don’t want me. Nobody wants me.’ ” 

“What’s her attitude on this?” 

“Utterly determined.” She listened, crept quickly 
outside the door and returned with the little poet 
Cole. 

“Angus has heard they’re engaged, too,” she said. 

The little poet shook his head. 

“Our attitude,” he said. “All of us. It’s isolated 
them together. The last thing to be desired. They’re 
banded together. Anything you do will be wrong, 
everything you do will further it.” He paused. “In 
a way Ripon has played chess with us all,” he said. 
“We’re where he meant us to be at the beginning of 
the game.” He paused. “He’ll carry off the queen,” 
he said. 

“Not while I’m here.” 

“Because you’re here,” said the little poet Cole, 
quietly. 

“Something must be done,” said Angus; his thoughts 
stood suddenly on tiptoe and then whirled round him 
like fiercely attacking things; he could not see or plan 
because of them, in his little, gentle, docile thoughts 
that had marched in order and decency all his life. 
“I’ve had letters from Kane, from Pat.” 

“So has Fannie.” The little poet was very quiet. 


164 The House of Broken Dreams 

“I mean, her attitude is so natural, so inevitable, 
Angus. It’s just a sequel to all that has gone before. 
They none of them realized the hurt it was to her, 
the shock. She was actually heroic in the attitude she 
maintained. The world she inherited from her father, 
that extraordinary world within a world she has 
administered all her life suddenly . . . decimated. Ripon 
secures her through his need of her. He promises 
her the material to rebuild her world. At the back 
of her mind she can’t believe that Kane and Judy and 
Pat have done with it all. She believes they’ll creep 
back to disprove you.” 

“One can’t tell her,” said Miss Proctor with quiver¬ 
ing lips. “One can’t tell her that we are very glad 
to go, old as we all are. One likes to be on one’s own. 
One adores it.” Her eyes shone a little. “It is only 
possible to owe to people when there is a chance of 
repaying. I mean, furnishing those rooms, everything, 
it’s been like a breath of life to us ... a breath of life. 
She calls it ingratitude in her heart; I suppose it is in 
a way. Gratitude should be temporary to be even 
bearable!” 

Papa Pip came in. He carried three or four hya¬ 
cinth bulbs in his hands. 

“It’s early to put them in,” he said. “But I think 
I’d best do it or they’ll be forgotten up in the loft. 
Well, Angus?” 

“He’s heard about Fannie and Ripon,” said Mr. 
Cole. 

“You don’t want to see her to-night, my boy,” said 
Papa Pip. “You don’t want to see her to-night. She’s 
overstrung.” He shook his pink head with its absurd 


The House of Broken Dreams 165 

fringe of silver hair, like fluff. ‘‘You go away and 
leave them to it.” 

“But I must remonstrate.” 

“You’ll go away quietly if you’re wise. He’s got 
her against everyone. They’re facing a hostile world 
together. D’you get me? Every bit of opposition 
strengthens his hand. D’you see? D’you think he 
wants us all living in his house? Not he!” 

“You’d be crazy to see her to-night,” said Miss 
Proctor. 

“I could knock that damned fellow’s head off,” 
said Angus hotly. 

“I think that’s about all he needs to secure a special 
license,” mused the little poet. 

11 

A long, interminable night. It seemed to grow in 
absurd streaks of summer and winter. Now Angus 
was hot, hot enough to throw his eiderdown off and 
his arms wide so that they rested on the sheets like 
cold water; now he was cold as if it were actually 
winter. 

He had an odd thought. Love made men into highly 
strung girls; the sleeplessness and the tingle of hot 
thoughts, perhaps they drew together just in their 
love and became alike. 

He heard the clock strike twelve. 

He tried to marshal his thoughts, to make them 
stand in serried rows that he might review them and 
group them and make them work out solutions, which 


166 The House of Broken Dreams 

was what they were obviously for, but they slipped 
about in foolish, haphazard, harlequin ways. 

He heard the bell ring. 

Of course, he’d go home. He visioned home with 
the vague, rather formless aridness with which youth 
visions death. There was lots of work for him to do 
there. His mother wanted him, cohorts of rather help¬ 
less, twittering female relations relied on him. 

He heard someone coming up the stairs; there was 
a knock at the door; there was the spurt of a match 
and Robert de Bouton revealed in it. 

He said: “I had Kane’s letter about Fannie and 
the fellow just three hours ago. I was out. It was wait¬ 
ing for me when I got back. I came at once. What 
are you going to do about it?” 

He seemed to whirl like an atom in the coloured 
kaleidoscope of his own thoughts. 

“There’s nothing to do, Bobbie.” 

Robert de Bouton came and sat on the edge of 
the bed. 

“That’s rot,” he objected. “Absolute rot.” 

“I can’t kidnap her, I can’t persuade her. She’s 
over age and her own mistress. She’s determined. 
He’s got her.” 

“A weasel like that!” 

They sat quite quiet. 

“We’re all her enemies,” said Angus. “I mean 
that’s how she sees us. Now we’ve shown ourselves 
his enemies, too. That’s banded them together. We’ve 
nothing against him except the very things that are 
his strength where she is concerned, his origin, his 
life.” 


The House of Broken Dreams 167 

“He’s mangy, my dear boy, positively mangy.” 

“You won’t make her see it.” 

“What are the latest developments?” 

“The fellow offered to carry on the home for the 
old people. One can imagine he was pretty unbearable 
as the embryo philanthropist. One needs tact for that 
sort of thing. They kicked. They’re not going to 
give up their freedom. They let their dislike of him 
creep through. The minute they go she’ll marry him.” 

“Of course, they mustn’t go.” 

“They’re crazy to.” 

“Bribe them.” 

“It’s all very well to yap.” 

Bobbie de Bouton lit a cigarette. The match made 
a stab of light in the soft darkness that they neither 
of them cared to change. 

“Kane hates him,” said Bobbie. 

“So do I,” burst out Angus. “I loathe him! I’d 
like to bash him about.” 

“Good Lord!” said Bobbie. “You! It’s incredible! 
Poor old boy. It’s got you. I always said it would 
when it came. You’ve got to hold on tight, frightfully 
tight, or he’ll get her. He doesn’t love her in the 
way you do at all. It’s easier for him. He’s not likely 
to do impetuous things.” He paused. “Mustn’t do 
impetuous things.” 

“I must do something,” said Angus. “I mean, damn 
it all, man! I can’t see it happen!” He paused. “He’s 
coarse-fibred, all his ways, his thoughts, they’re dif¬ 
ferent from hers.” 

“I know,” said Bobbie. “You’ve talked to Mar¬ 
jorie.” 


l68 The House of Broken Dreams 

“I didn’t know the whole thing was settled until 
to-day. I suggested it. She thought it was a good 
idea.” 

“I see,” Bobby said slowly. “Of course, if it’s like 
that. I thought she might suggest a way out. I don’t 
know.” 

“I’ve got to see Fannie to-morrow.” 

“I should be almighty careful.” 

“You wouldn’t approve?” 

“I should be absolutely neutral. That’s your one 
hope, neutrality; at least it can’t force the issue, and 
you must coax the old people to stay there a bit.” 

“They’re crazy to be off and start their careers. Oh! 
can’t you understand?” 

“You’re not telling me you can . . . after all your 
dissertations on the subject! My good fool . . . what 
are their united ages? A hundred and eighty years 
setting off to make its name and fortune.” 

“Why not?” 

“Because those things belong to youth. What’s got 
into you, Angus? Are you losing all your common 
sense? Are you supposing poor little Mr. Cole can 
storm literary London, that Miss Proctor can conquer 
the musical critics of to-day? Why, boy! the idea’s 
crazy.” 

“They’ve never had a chance.” 

“But good lor’, man!” 

“Hasn’t common sense made this muddle?” said 
Angus excitedly; “we’ve made a fetish of it. Where’s 
it all led? I believe Fannie’s right with her imagina¬ 
tion and her insight. All things are possible if you 
believe them possible. That’s the keynote of it all . . . 


The House of Broken Dreams 169 

sheer belief. I was sure of everything and now I’m 
sure of nothing, and that’s when you begin to learn, 
Bobbie, when you move the heavy stuff in your mind 
that convention and heredity planted there and let 
the other things come in. What’s all my precious com¬ 
mon sense got for me out of life? It’s lost me things 
... all along the line it’s lost me things.” 

“I said the confounded place would mischief you. 
Look here, Angus, the whole lot of you may be in the 
soup yet. I’m going to marry Kane next year, but 
there are two others, Judy and Pat. Go level, old boy. 
Fannie doesn’t know you’re paying for their education 
yet. I mean that would be the last straw. That would 
humiliate her and send her into that lizard’s arms. She 
couldn’t stick it. She’s treated you pretty rottenly 
really.” 

“What are you driving at?” 

“Old O’Rane must have talked to this Ripon chap 
some time or other. Ripon went to that old ass the 
lawyer.” 1 

“Well?” 

“He offered to make settlements on all the O’Ranes 
out of his £6,000, as some sort of return for the refuge 
O’Rane had provided in the past. Of course he guessed 
how the land lay and wanted to make sure.” 

“How do you know ?” 

“I met Barton, the lawyer, in the Temple. He was 
so full of it he ran over with information. When 
sentiment touches a man who deals in facts he goes 
absolutely to pot. Ripon had him prettily fed, grati¬ 
tude and all the rest of it, and in return he had the 
whole O’Rane business spread out before him as bare 


170 The House of Broken Dreams 

as a biscuit. The lawyer wouldn’t hear a word against 
Ripon.” 

“You didn’t tell me.” 

“I thought you’d got enough to go on with. I didn’t 
see the danger of it till I got Kane’s letter to-night 
saying Fannie had written saying she was going to 
marry him.” 

“But he hasn’t told Fannie yet.” 

“It’s his last card. Don’t force his hand, Angus. 
The man’s no fool. We ought to be able to find out 
something about him. A man with a fox face like 
his can’t have lived a nice life.” 

“D’you suppose she’d listen?” He sat up in bed. 
“Look here, Bobbie. It matters to me. It matters to 
me like hell.” 

“D’you suppose I don’t know? Do you suppose I 
strolled over here at this hour for a walk?” 

“What do you suppose he’ll do, Bobbie?” 

“Whatever suits him best. Look here, Angus, mark 
time, that’s all you can do. Persuade the old folks 
to stay on a bit. Don’t force the issue.” 

Angus said doggedly: 

“There’s a way out of everything. There always is. 
It’s just that we can’t see it.” 

in 

Gladys was very, very tired, and yet in her very 
tiredness there was a heavy sort of sweetness and mel¬ 
lowness because she was among beautiful things and 
beautiful colours, and her mind and her eyes and some- 


The House of Broken Dreams 171; 

times her small work-worn fingers caressed them 
openly and joyously. 

Impossible to feel detached from them as 
some people did, to regard it all as something 
you could or couldn’t afford, so much easier 
and happier to blend with it, to give your¬ 
self up to the queer spell that the banners of 
rose and blue georgette above your head created, to the 
bales of shimmering, jewel-like fabric that would evolve 
into evening dresses, to all the little gay glass and china 
powder bowls, to the thousand and one things that 
seemed to creep through your eyes down into you and 
shake you with a sort of frail, bright happiness, sway 
you with it as if you were a human harebell. 

Her mind stopped tinkling and looked at itself with 
a little shock that had become so frequent it had almost 
degenerated into mere recognition. Here was she, 
the wife of a clergyman of the Church of England, 
steeping herself drunkenly in shops and merchandise, 
just exactly as some steeped themselves in art or music 
and other things that were supposed to put them a 
notch above other people. 

It was warm in the big shop; not warm enough to 
start ones’ chilblains, but warm enough to make one 
forget the hole in one’s shoes that let in damp in a spot, 
so that it was like treading with a hot foot on a cold 
penny. The new daylight-light burnt in little blue 
shafts of down-beaten brilliance on the counters, arti¬ 
ficial lights shone here and there making stinging pools 
of colour on satin and velvet and the vivid mottle of 
flowered materials. 

Gladys Kerr gave a tiny smile, a tiny smile. 


172 The House of Broken Dreams 

She wished vaguely that she could have afforded tea 
and hot toast. 

She could hear the fret of the music far away; some¬ 
times when doors swung open it was thrown at her in 
a shrill, joyous lilt, almost like a laugh. 

She would have liked to sit quiet and sip tea out 
of thin china and watch the waitresses rushing round 
with their trays of cakes like children’s toys, and bend¬ 
ing to deposit the customer’s choice with silver tongs 
so that they had the absurd air of slaves gracefully 
salaaming; she liked the paper-white frilliness of the 
aprons, the blue frocks and the blue bows that matched 
the blue curtains and the blue ceiling, the scent of tea 
and toast and cakes and face creams and face powders, 
the whole atmosphere that like a thin, warm haze shut 
out for her reality and housework and the jarring 
clank of the machinery of life. 

She wanted such a little really, this pale, pretty girl 
with the lustreless hair; just the coloured cotton-woolly 
life of the suburbs, its refinements, its daintiness, its 
secret pride and fierce little snobberies. She would 
have made a toy model village of her life, with only 
her fellow model villagers to come in and beat out the 
paths, and help her build the wall higher, so that they 
all grew in together, she and her children, shutting out 
everything that wasn’t pretty or dainty or nice, letting 
in nothing that they could not incorporate neatly and 
satisfactorily. 

It was fate that made her marry a man with horizons 
she could not see, with ideals that were like invisible 
ladders, with a mentality that continually ignored the 


The House of Broken Dreams 173 

furnishings and fixings of life which were almost her 
only means of self-expression. 

All her married life she had tried in secret ways 
to climb to Philip Kerr’s level, she had tried prayer, 
hanging on to it as if it were a word formula that 
produced effects, she had tried self-abasement, she had 
tried to wriggle up from her materialism on some of 
the poetry her husband loved, but it only swung her far 
out so that her little aims and hopes and dreams be¬ 
came specks and she gained a frightening feeling of not 
really existing at all, and finally she had come down to 
sheer, hard, physical work as her only means of ex¬ 
piation for so persistently remaining herself. She 
worked like a nigger in her home and the parish. 

At first she tried to demonstrate this littleness of out¬ 
look to Philip, but Philip refused to see. His love for 
her was like a great, warm magnifying glass through 
which her little trivial movements became titanic, her 
character strengthened, broadened and became beauti¬ 
ful. In desperation she groused to Philip, bombarded 
him with her little wants and unfulfilled requirements, 
but his love for her saw only the inevitable filings of a 
fine spirit perpetually refining itself by unselfish work 
for others. 

Finally she grew scared by his respect of her. He 
saw her as she was not and never would be; his love 
lent to her a foreign personality and soul, and the belief 
in the companionship and the love of that personality 
and soul kept him happy, strong, even splendid in all 
his ways. 

She saw that dimly. In ways that took the strength 
out of her, that filled her with a physical weariness 


174 The House of Broken Dreams 

that was like death, she strove to justify herself and 
her real love for Philip that seemed so often like a 
little fire on an immense desert, by actual material 
service. She worked like two women, both in her 
home and the parish, and gained, not admiration or 
approbation, but, being a parson's wife, the conviction 
that if she could do that much she ought to do more. 

In her happy meanderings round the great shop she 
was aware of Philip and the parish at the back of her 
mind, but it was queerly restful here, as if she had gone 
comfortably placid and toneless, content to see things 
and rejoice in them, and by and by she must resume her 
normal, aching, bone-structure and take it away to 
work with in real life. 

She lingered near the glove counter. 

There was no one buying gloves, and the girls, after 
a brief glance at her, went on with their talk; dances 
and frocks and a new buyer who, they said, was a 
public school boy. 

“If I had a boy I should like to send him to Rep- 
ton,” said a blonde, powdering a glove with plaster- 
white hands. 

The other two girls looked at her curiously. One 
was remembering what she had told her about her 
father, board school and Canning Town, and the other 
was remembering what she had told her about her only 
brother, Borstal and a shipping office in the Malay. 
They were holding these possibly forgotten confidences 
behind their faces, ready to produce them instantly. 

“Oh I I don't know,” said the blonde, suddenly re¬ 
membering too. “It sounds mannish, Repton. I like 
boys to be mannish.” 


The House of Broken Dreams 175 

Gladys smiled involuntarily. That was how they 
used to talk in the old days. Not real talk, but the 
idle flowering of their stemless, rootless dreams. 

It all came back to her like a poignant memory of 
youth. 

She moved about the bargain tables, fingering odd 
lengths with fascinated fingers; this would make a 
charming nightgown button-holed in pink; if one cut 
carefully this would make a blouse. 

The people round her became shadows encompassing 
her with blurred movement; it gave her a little aloof 
feeling, a sense of segregation, just as if she were 
alone with her secret planning. 

One shadow detached itself and trailed mistily over 
the edges of her thoughts. It seemed always just a 
little behind her, or a little to the side; again and again 
she turned her shoulder on it almost pettishly. 

Then suddenly she saw the length of crepe de Chine, 
snow white, lustrous, heavy, wonderful in its fineness. 

It was just the very thing! Just the very thing! 

She must have it. She must have it! This im¬ 
pression lapped away all the unresisting brittleness of 
her other thoughts like an incoming tide. 

She caught her breath. She even laughed a little 
with a child’s absurd, happy delight. 

She stretched out her hand eagerly. 

She snatched it. 

She wore an old-fashioned heather mixture travel¬ 
ling coat with a high collar turned up. 

She felt a thrill of possession as she drew it inside 
her coat. So easy. So awfully easy. 

Then suddenly she woke to consciousness of her 


176 The House of Broken Dreams 

movements, to the significance of an almost involuntary 
act. 

Sheer terror gripped her. 

It was all instantaneous and yet it seetned to have 
covered an immense period of time. 

The shadow that trailed over the edges of her 
thoughts suddenly stood rooted in them, blocking them 
with a terror-stricken darkness that was like night. 

She knew that he had been watching her. 

She knew that he had seen. 

The second she moved he moved. 

Her old velour was pulled down so that only the 
tip of the nose showed. She pulled it down lower and 
sprinted like a mad thing for the door. 

The shop was full of casual shoppers, women with 
their mental processes slowed up by idle contempla¬ 
tion, drugged by vague speculation. She startled them, 
a suddenly hustling figure, they got between her and 
the detective with their slow, amazed stares, his angry 
cry to stop her blew over their heads like a warning 
whistle over the heads of sleepers. 

Impetuously he shoved them on one side, their soft 
bodies and their soft furs seemed to clog his hands, 
their umbrellas and their stupid, rooted feet impeded 
his own feet like undergrowth. 

He reached the entrance in time to see Gladys leap 
into a taxi. 

Cursing savagely he leapt into another taxi and 
gave his orders, his explanations out of the window to 
the taxi-man as they moved off. 

He had a loud voice. Some of the pedestrians 
heard; the doorkeeper with his huge umbrella to pro- 


The House of Broken Dreams 177 

tect the heads of the precious car customers heard; 
they all stood cloggingly too, and stared as well. 

Inside the taxi the detective swore monotonously 
anathematizing all soft women in soft furs, his eyes 
glued to the taxi in front of him. 

She hadn’t thrown anything out. She didn’t know 
she was being followed. He’d get her with the 
goods on. 


IV 

Gladys Kerr had only one desire ... to get to 
Fannie O’Rane. 

She had given the taxi-man the address almost with¬ 
out thinking. 

Fannie O’Rane would put it right. Fannie O’Rane 
would scold her and tell her she was a fool, but it 
would all be put right. 

She did not actually know she was being followed; 
she only felt it instinctively. 

She screwed her eyes up tight and sat with clenched 
hands like a child waiting for a blow. 

If the parish ever knew! My God! if the parish 
ever knew! Philip’s beloved parish! 

She began to pray in jerks and spurts, as if the 
prayers were being ground out of her involuntarily 
by some invisible method of torture. 

If she could only have known why she took it. 

She wasn’t a shop-lifter! Anyone could see she 
wasn’t a shop-lifter! She was the wife of a minister 
of the Church of England. 

What would Philip do if they found out? Would 


178 The House of Broken Dreams 

he be defrocked, or resign? He believed in her. Con¬ 
sciousness of his belief broke over her, causing her 
mind a deep, grinding, sweating pain. * 

If she could only die there in that little dark box of 
a taxi. Oh! Philip! Philip! Philip! 

The taxi made a spurt forward. 

The policeman held the traffic up behind them. 

The detective leant out of the window. 

He shouted to the policeman. His face grew red 
and mottled. People on the curb stared. He leapt 
out, then he leapt in and the policeman let him pass, 
but he held back all the other traffic and stood staring 
at the little taxi that had mingled with the down¬ 
stream of the traffic. 

When Gladys taxi drew up outside the door of the 
dreaming house in the dreaming square, the detective’s 
taxi just turned the corner. 

“Got her!” he said. 


v 

The little Punchinello butler let her in. 

He said: 

“Not an accident, mum?” scared by her, not by the 
whiteness of her face—he could hardly see it between 
her hat and coat, but warned by something indefinable 
about her. 

“Miss O’Rane?” 

“Drawing-room,” he said. 

Upstairs she bolted, stumbling a little in her long 
coat on the stairs, gasping, crying like something pur¬ 
sued by all the fiends of hell. 

The lights were lit in the drawing-room, the smell 
of hot toast and tea came to her almost like a promise. 


The House of Broken Dreams 179 

Fannie was there, a bust behind the great silver tea 
tray. She stilled the little tinkle of her pleasant tea¬ 
making. 

“Why, Gladys!” she said. 

Tom Ripon was there with his pipe and the squirrel 
brightness of his eyes; and Angus Reid was there. 

She stood with her back against the door. 

“Fannie!” she said, “Fve stolen something. Fve 
stolen something. I’m going to have a baby. I wanted 
it for the baby. Just one pretty thing. I don’t know 
why I did it. I think they’re after me.” 

She had an impression of instant division among 
her audience and yet no one moved, not a hand, not 
an eyelid. There was association with her and instant 
dissociation. 

“Oh! Gladys!” Fannie said, awfully quietly, awfully 
uncensuring. 

Angus Reid slipped to the window, the long velvet 
curtain shielded him. 

“She’s right,” he said. “They’re after her. There’s 
a man in a taxi.” 

“Your hat,” Fannie ordered. “Quick, Gladys. Give 
me your hat. Now your coat. Don’t be a fool, my 
dear. I don’t matter to anyone. That hat-pin, quick. 
Sit behind the tea tray. Quick!” 

Tom Ripon unmoved behind his pipe, but paper- 
white, and the watching flick . . . flick . . . 

flicker of his bright, squirrel eyes. 

“Fannie!” said Angus. 

She jammed on the hat. Low down and shapeless 
as Gladys had worn it. She struggled into the coat 


180 The House of Broken Dreams 

and buttoned it high. Her voice was low and quiet 
and quick, it seemed to patter out her words. 

"It isn’t only the baby, it’s Philip. Swear you won’t 
ever tell him. Swear! Go on, swear!” 

A thunderous knock on the door shivered her w r ords. 

Tom Ripon sprang to his feet. 

“Look here!” he said, “I want to get out of this. 
The police have got a down on me. I’ve left all that 
behind me! Look here.” 

“Fannie!” said Angus. 

They looked at each other. 

“Oh! please! please!” said Fannie. “Oh! please! 
please! please!” her voice made a little queer song, a 
song that seemed to flutter and throb. 

Gladys was saying out loud in a level, heavy way, 
over and over again: “I swear. I swear. I swear.” 

Fannie stooped and put her hand over her mouth. 
She was holding the white crepe de Chine in her hand. 
She was smiling, a sweet nailed-on smile that was like 
a mask she held in place. 

“Philip” she said to Gladys. “Philip!” 

“I’ll never tell him as long as I live. I swear on 
oath,” Gladys repeated under her hand. 

“Look here!” Tom Ripon was urgent. “I tell you 
I won’t be dragged into this. I tell you I won’t be.” 

The door was flung open. 

They saw the Punchinello butler gesticulating agi¬ 
tatedly behind a tall man. 

The tall man swooped on Fannie and Fannie 
screamed. The scream was not like Fannie. It was 
as if she released it from a little box and watched it 
flutter about their ears, gauging its effect. 


The House of Broken Dreams 181 

The detective put his hand under her coat suddenly, 
deftly. 

“Ha! milady!” he said. “Ha! M 

She screamed again, that funny little scream as if 
she had released the sound accidentally and was a little 
startled by it herself. 

“Caught with the goods on you,” said the detective. 

“I didn’t mean to,” she said. “I don’t know what 
came over me.” 

“Keep it,” he advised curtly. “Keep it till you need 
it. Don’t waste it on me. Is this your home ?” 

“It is,” said Fannie. 

“I’ll have to take the names and addresses of every¬ 
one here.” 

The little Punchinello butler was pantomiming with 
his hands; his mouth was sagging loosely and his face 
was putty-coloured. 

Fannie looked at him. Her face was grave, her 
voice was steadying. 

“It’s quite all right,” she said. “Mr. Reid will 
explain. I trust you.” 

“Keep your mouth shut,” ordered the detective 
curtly. 

“Live here ?” he said to Gladys. 

She made a vague gesture with her hands. 

“Name?” barked the detective. 

“Mrs. Philip Kerr,” said Angus Reid quietly. 
“Wife of the Rev. Philip Kerr. A parochial call.” 

“Sorry,” said the detective. “Matter of form.” He 
turned to Tom Ripon. 

“I refuse to be drawn into this,” Tom answered has- 


182 The House of Broken Dreams 

tily. “I refuse to give my name. I am an acquaint¬ 
ance.” 

“Thomas Ripon,” said Angus quietly. 

“Ah!” said the detective. His glance was half fur¬ 
tive, an instinctive memorizing and classifying. 

“And you?” 

“I am coming with the lady,” said Angus. 

“I shall charge her at the local police station.” 

“It is just round the corner.” 

“I know that,” said the detective. 

He looked round the room. It was a pretty room. 
It was a cosy room. It was full of bronze chrysan¬ 
themums and firelight and the smell of tea and hot 
toast. Gladys was crouched over the tea things. Tom 
Ripon was staring at the detective. His eyes were no 
longer cheerful squirrel eyes. They were ugly with 
memories and thoughts. 

It was on Tom Ripon’s face that the detective’s eyes 
rested last. 

There was a dreadful silence when they had gone. 
It was as if a great wind had blown through the room 
and carried off the living, and there were only dead 
things left, dead things that did not move. 

A big bronze chrysanthemum began to drop petal by 
petal. It was like the bodies of singed moths falling. 

They heard the taxi chug away. 

Suddenly Gladys began to tinkle the teaspoons, to 
tinkle them so that it sounded like a rosary. She began 
to say softly, monotonously: “I swear never to tell 
Philip as long as I live, as long as I live, as long as I 
live.” 


The House of Broken Dreams 183 

The door burst open and the little Punchinello butler 
stood there with the tears pouring down his face. 

“I’ve known her from a baby!” he said. ‘‘What’s 
it mean, sir, what’s it mean? What devilment is it? 
He asked for the lady who’d just come in. I said, 
‘Upstairs, sir.’ ” 

Gladys Kerr behind the tea tray still went on uncon¬ 
sciously fingering the teaspoons and repeating: 

“I swear never to tell him as long as I live.” 

Tom Ripon sprang to his feet, threw his arms in the 
air and shouted in a sharp, high, ugly voice: 

“For Christ’s sake stop it, can’t you?” 


Chapter VIII 


i 

T HEY did not speak in the taxi. 

The detective and Fannie sat side by side. She 
looked almost grotesque, the slit of her white, com¬ 
posed face between the down-slammed hat and the up¬ 
turned collar. There was contrast in the immaculate¬ 
ness of her tiny, expensive nigger suede shoes peeping 
below the shabby hem of the shabby coat. It was as 
if her outfit were prelude to adventure. 

“Where are you taking her?” Angus said. 

“Local police court,” the detective spoke laconically, 
grudgingly. 

“Oh, no!” said Fannie sharply. 

They both looked at her in equal surprise. She 
shrank back from their looks as if from physical con¬ 
tact. 

The detective said again grudgingly, glowering at 
her with his large red mottled face, which was no 
longer angry or apprehensive, but pleased in a fat, 
sleek, childish way: 

“You can elect to be tried by the magistrate or go 
to trial, or the magistrate can if he thinks it necessary, 
send you for trial whether you like it or not. You’ll 
have to appear ultimately in the police court of the 
district in which the crime was committed. That’s the 
law.” 


The House of Broken Dreams 185 

His voice was like a grim book, opened, read, shut 
down. 

“Bail?” Angus Reid said curtly. 

“The inspector or superintendent of the police court 
has power to grant bail if there's no chance of accused 
being brought up before the magistrate within twenty- 
four hours.” 

“If there is I'll have to stay?” 

“I’m not here to answer questions, young woman.” 

As he climbed out of the taxi this burly man in plain 
clothes seemed by some fantastic magic to become a 
policeman, to don the grotesque majesty of the uni¬ 
formed law. His humanity became eclipsed by a tre¬ 
mendous blankness that was yet full of tremendous 
self-importance. 

The room they went into was like a bank. There 
were counters and books on it; a little weedy woman 
in moleskin was saying to a tall policeman who was 
making entries in a colossal book: “We shall be away 
from the seventeenth to the thirtieth. The keys are 
with my charwoman, who has worked for me for 
years.” 

The detective said something to another policeman; 
they lifted a flap in the counter and went through. 
Fannie heard the woman in moleskins say in a thin 
voice: “Is she drunk?” 

They passed a room from which the buzz of a boys' 
school swept out, and the smell of cocoa; she could see 
clipped heads like the head of the soldier-gentleman on 
the recruiting posters. 

She thought that police stations are neither sordid 
nor imposing, but particularly clean, empty, imper- 


186 The House of Broken Dreams 

sonal places. She thought what everyone thinks so 
many times in real life, that so few things are like 
they picture them in books; there were no drunks 
hammering on cell doors or lost children being com¬ 
forted on masculine knees, there was no interest or 
excitement. 

Well-planned machinery was set invisibly in motion 
in precisely the same emotionless, effortless, inevitable 
way it works in a hospital when a fresh case is brought 
in. 

The inspector looked at her. 

“What charge?” he said. 

There was an odd look in his eyes. They consulted 
together, the detective and he, as if she were a case 
who suddenly betrayed symptoms that had been waited 
for. The inspector had the air of a man who sees his 
diagnosis confirmed. 

“I know the name,” he said, and then again, “I 
know the address.” 

The detective stared. The inspector shrugged his 
shoulders. 

“Bolsheviks,” he said. “I had trouble during the 
war.” 

Fannie broke out passionately. “It was nothing to 
do with the O’Ranes.” 

“I am here to stand bail,” said Angus quietly, evenly, 
interruptively. “Will you ring up these people to 
verify my statements or do whatever is necessary? 
There is my personal card.” 

It was all so easy, so trifling, that was Fannie’s im¬ 
pression, only she was tired and they did not ask her 
to sit down. She sat down. 


The House of Broken Dreams 187 

“Stand up!” barked the inspector. 

She stood up. She had suddenly gone cold and deaf 
with realization. That was how the Law got you— 
just on the end of a long bit of string . . . and 
suddenly the pull. The burble of voices went on round 
her. She heard Angus giving names, a well-known 
K.C.’s name, a baronet’s name. He had letters with 
him. He handed them over. There was telephoning; 
Angus’s voice, keen, urgent, and the inspector’s voice, 
flat and doubtful. Gradually their attitude towards 
him changed. It was as if they permitted him to share 
that peculiar attitude of mind towards her that robbed 
her of personality, sex, class and type. 

After a long time the inspector said: 

“She can go.” 

They went out together into the street; by little roads 
it was only a stone’s throw from the square. A fleeting 
thought swept in and out of her mind; the taxi had 
gone a tortuous way round to find the police court, 
they had gone a tortuous way round in the police court 
to find out very simple things. Her uncaring state was 
almost restful. 

“Don’t worry,” Angus urged, as they went down 
the steps. The fine grey dusk met them like a kind 
cloak, wrapped itself round them so that after the bare¬ 
ness of the police station they had a feeling of being 
instantly cared for, protected. 

“They were horrible to Daddy over Tom,” she said 
quietly. “I remembered the inspector the minute I 
saw him. They wanted to turn us out, just as if we 
had been a nest of vipers and wasps. The law couldn’t 
touch us. That made them hate us. They had Daddy 


188 The House of Broken Dreams 

up. They said he harboured enemies of the realm. 
Daddy said he was only a refuge for the oppressed. 
They used to watch outside the house. If we showed 
one tiny gleam of light during those days they sum¬ 
moned us.” 

“It’ll be all right,” Angus repeated. 

“The detective knew Tom’s name,” said Fannie. 
“Poor Tom!” 

“No one matters but you.” Angus’s voice trembled 
a little. 

He was not so much passionately identifying him¬ 
self with her as unconsciously acting in natural ac¬ 
cordance with some sympathetic and instinctive under¬ 
standing that seemed always to have been there, while 
the old antagonism was effaced by it as if it had never 
existed. 

“They won’t expect us back so soon,” she said. 

They passed through the crowded streets like pil¬ 
grims through a carnival, their voices detached them¬ 
selves from the hurly-burly and travelled to each other’s 
ears like secret, private messages of individual com¬ 
fort. The garish light of the little shops spangled 
them, and the darkness from doorways that night made 
mysterious blotted them out again gently, giving them 
over to each other in their mutual invisibility in a way 
that was strange and startling to them both; so that 
their very thoughts seemed to companion each other 
and be no longer hidden and alone. 

“You know Philip Kerr,” she said. 

It was not a question. It was just a statement. 
Because of that unity there was between them it im- 


The House of Broken Dreams 189 

plied and accepted his understanding of the thing she 
was doing. 

“Gladys will become as wonderful as he thinks her, ,, 
she said. 

“But what of you, you?” he demanded. 

“I see the thing awfully clearly, Angus, I think. 
We’re all stones thrown into the pool of life. We make 
our little ring on it. I’ve made mine. But Philip Kerr 
is a big stone . . . his ring will widen and widen, 
it will bring joy and comfort and security to thousands 
of difficult lives. We can’t let this thing cut across it 
and break it up. He’d have to resign. There would 
be all his good, strong, fine life motiveless. I matter 
such a little, my influence is so small. It doesn’t give 
me pleasure to think this, Angus. Why! at the moment 
I don’t matter any more than a mother whose family 
have grown up and gone out into the world.” 

“We’re all of us identified with other people,” he 
said. 

“No one will know,” she said. “I ... I shall 
be out again before Judy and Pat are back for the 
holidays. Kane is away for the year. We shall have 
to tell Miss Proctor and Papa Pip and little Mr. Cole.” 

“But they’ll wonder why they don’t hear from you, 
Kane and the rest.” 

“You must say I have broken my right wrist. Miss 
Proctor can write letters supposed to be at my dicta¬ 
tion every week. It won’t^e many weeks you see.” 

“I’ll get you the first counsel at the bar.” 

“No! No!” she protested quickly. “Can’t you see, 
that way it will draw attention to it. It will get into 
the papers. You must let this go through quietly, 


190 The House of Broken Dreams 

quietly without anything at all to differentiate it from 
any other form of petty theft.” 

They turned into the square. 

“Isn’t it funny?” she said wonderingly, “such a 
little time we were here, and none of this had hap¬ 
pened. Things happen so quickly.” 

“Look here,” he pleaded. “I’ve got to talk to you 
before this thing gets complicated by the dismay and 
horror of all the other people who have got to know. 
It’s your attitude that matters—not theirs, and the 
attitudes will get tangled up and I shall not be able to 
see simply as I see to-night. You won t be able to see 
simply as you see to-night, Fannie . . . it is so; 
one has a clear, honest picture of relative values 
... and then the colour of other people’s opinion 
oozes in and it is lost.” 

“But Tom ...” 

“Give me a minute,” he said. 

She bowed her head. 

“They leave the square garden gate open after the 
flowers are dead.” He knew that as he crossed the 
road. He pushed the little iron gate, and it opened 
under his hand. They passed through, and he shut it 
after him and shut out the world. The world seemed 
to draw back on tiptoe and leave a hushed stillness that 
was like a gift vouchsafed to them. 

“I will do anything and everything you wish,” he 
said. 

“I am going to ask you something far harder. I 
am going to ask you to do nothing.” 

There was no moon, no mystery, no romance. There 
was a wistful brooding tranquillity in the half denuded 


The House of Broken Dreams 191 

trees, there was an unmoved stillness in the slow disin¬ 
tegration of summer beauty that was taking place in 
the darkness around them, that was peaceful as the 
unquestioning acquiescence of age towards death. 

“Everything I can think of,” she said, “every aspect 
of it makes it impossible to do anything but what I am 
doing. They would let Gladys off because she’s going 
to have a baby. Think! Think of the publicity and 
life afterwards for them both. Only think!” 

“They’re like shadows behind you,” he said. “I 
only see them when you move yourself to point them 
out to me.” 

“Don’t let me pity myself,” she said sharply. “Don’t 
let me think of this act in any other way but as the 
act of saving two children from disaster ... al¬ 
most an instinctive thing. It’s the only way to look at 
it. You know Philip is a great man.” 

“I know he’s a clergyman. Men don’t look at clergy¬ 
men naturally, and so they don’t see them naturally. 
She’s just a silly kid, crazy on clothes.” 

“You’re not helping,” she said, “you’re pushing 
against me again.” She clasped her hands, her voice 
supplicated quietly and urgently. “Oh! Angus! Angus! 
can’t you see? for me it’s just an incident. It doesn’t 
pull my life up sharp like a horrible accident and turn 
it into a darkness. It doesn’t make me an outcast in 
my own sight because in my own sight and the sight 
of those that care for me and know the truth I ami 
magnificently justified. It is almost as if I had availed 
myself of a privilege. If I let this thing happen to 
Philip and Gladys I should be making outcasts of 
them.” 


192 The House of Broken Dreams 

He said: 

“You mustn’t talk to me like that, you know, be¬ 
cause you make me see what you don’t seem to want 
recognized . . . the magnificance of you shining 

through the magnificence of what you do.” 

“I think I want you to think well of me.” 

“I think I do,” he said. 

They sat quite still on a little seat. Far off they 
could hear the roar of the traffic like a great river 
running endlessly. There was the primrose blur of 
many lights, but over them a little private canopy of 
quiet darkness was stretched, upheld by the tarnished 
silver of distant stars. 

“You are my friend,” she said. 

“I am your friend,” he answered. 

His eyes were wet. He was oddly relieved by that. 
It reassured him like the outward weal of some terrific 
blow. It was the outward manifestation of the un¬ 
speakable things that he was hiding in his heart. The 
quietness of his voice was laid over them at tremen¬ 
dous cost, by iron self-control, like a hand laid over 
fire to keep it under. 

“We must let the law take its course,” she said 
quietly. “And so work itself out with no untidy ends 
for other people to pick up. You promise me you’ll 
do nothing to make things easier for me.” 

“If you wish it, I promise.” 

“If you only knew how quiet I felt about it all.” 

She rose to her feet. The houses seemed to creep 
nearer them, almost as if they were tactful old chap¬ 
erons that their movement had recalled to a sense of 
duty; they were aware of the blurred peering of lighted 


The House of Broken Dreams 193 

windows; they became conscious of music, the thin 
silvery tinkle of pianos. 

She said, very, very quietly and evenly: 

“As I don't have to appear at the police court before 
two days it will be quite all right. The name of O’Rane 
won’t enter into it at all.” 

He said, “Why?” The word seemed to fall an in¬ 
describable distance before it struck an answer, and all 
the while his mind hung suspended over it, watching 
in dismay and apprehension. 

“Tom and I are going to get married the day after 
to-morrow,” she said. “He has the license.” 

11 

The tea tray stood unmoved beside the fire, which 
had dulled to a sullen glow, the curtains were not 
drawn; the chilly evening pressed greyly against the 
windows at either end of the long, low room. 

At their entrance Tom Ripon sprang from the same 
seat he had occupied at their exit. Their eyes, accus¬ 
tomed to outside darkness, saw his face as a sharp 
white blur. 

Nothing had altered except themselves, and they 
had gone out and come back quite different. 

“Tom,” Fannie said. She was suddenly reined in 
by the overwhelming consciousness of having returned 
an alien. 

“Good God!” he burst out. “Can’t you tell me what 
happened?” 

“Yes. I am to appear at the police court. I elected 


194 


The House of Broken Dreams 

. anyway I’m to be tried by the magistrate. Pm 
out on bail.’" She paused. “Did Gladys go home?” 

“Yes. I suppose so. I don’t know when she went. 

I didn’t notice. Good God! Fannie, d’you think you’ve 
any right to come back to me as . . . as if you’d 
just been out to tea.” 

“Yes,” said Fannie, “if I feel like that.” She paused 
again. “I want to feel like that.” 

Tom Ripon swung round on Reid. 

“Is it the time for that sort of vague talk? Tell me 
what happened, Reid, everything.” 

Fannie walked to the window—stood looking down 
into Papa Pip’s garden while Reid complied. Her 
fingers drummed a little song on the glass. 

Tom Ripon began to pace the room. 

“It’s crazy!” he jerked at them. “A twopenny-half¬ 
penny girl like Gladys Kerr! Get yourself muddled up 
with the police for her! They’ll let her off. There 
isn’t a doubt! She’d never smell the inside of a prison. 
You don’t know what it is to get muddled up with 
the police . . . only once and they’ve got you. 
They’ve a right to look at you, to speak to you, years 
afterwards, in a way . . . Oh! I know! Don’t think 
I don’t know.” 

Fannie came back to the centre of the room. She 
put coal on the fire. It darkened and chilled the room. 

“You mustn’t take it like that, Tom.” 

“Take it? Good God, I don’t take it at all. I’ll 
tell ’em the whole story.” 

“Do you think they would believe you? They took 
me red-handed—I think they call it that—-with the 
goods on me.” 


The House of Broken Dreams 195 

“You acted on impulse. The whole thing was done 
in a jiffy! Reid . . . talk to her.” 

“I haven't anything to say.” 

“What d’you mean, you ‘haven’t anything to say’ ? 
You know what it means to Fannie. She’ll be ostra¬ 
cized. She’s sacrificing herself for a rat of a woman 
with no more guts than . . . Think of Kane—your 
pal’s going to marry her; think of those kids at 
school. What d’you mean, you ‘haven’t anything to 
say’ ?” 

“I shan’t be prosecuted under the name of O’Rane,” 
said Fannie. 

“What do you mean, Fannie?” 

“I shan’t be called up till after we’re married.” 

“I see,” said Tom Ripon, “I see.” He relit his pipe 
with a hand that trembled. In the upflare of the 
match they saw his good-looking, sharp face. He 
began to bluster. He kicked up the bluster all round 
him like dust to hide his preparations for ignominious 
flight. “My God! d’you think when I’ve worked my 
way out I want it all raked up.” 

“You mean you don’t want to marry me if this goes 
through?” She was so quiet, like someone serving 
peacefully at a peaceful breakfast table, her flexible 
voice held just that casual “Coffee or tea?” note. 

“I can’t,” he said, with an ugly little gulp. “You 
must see that, Fannie. You know how they were to 
me that time!” 

He was just like a squirrel, Angus thought, squirm¬ 
ing about in a very agony of nervous self-preservation, 
twittering, chattering, shrilling with panic in his bright 
eyes. 


196 The House of Broken Dreams 

“I can see what you’re thinking, both of you,” he 
said in a high voice, “but you don’t know. You 
haven’t been through it and you don’t know.” 

Fannie said: “You don’t know what I’m thinking, 
Tom, or you couldn’t stay in the same room as my 
thoughts of you. Please go away. I don’t want to 
see you any more in my life. Angus, please see that 
he goes.” 

She went out of the room very quietly and left the 
two men together. 

Tom Ripon was grey now. He made little futile, 
girlish gestures with his hands, his too brilliant eyes 
sought anchorage. 

“I know what you are thinking of me and I don’t 
care,” he said. “I don’t care because you don’t under¬ 
stand. If you understood, I should care. Fannie 
stood for me as a symbol, a promise. She . . . 

she’s become a betrayed trust, an outraged symbol. 
It isn’t going to cast me down, all this. You watch!” 

Angus said: 

“Look here, Ripon, it’s wasted on me all this . . . 

this word-scum. It can’t hide up the thing you’ve just 
done. I think you’d better go.” 

Ripon began to pace the room. He trailed and 
swirled words round him until it seemed to Angus 
standing motionless in emotional turmoil that it be¬ 
came a fantastic dance of explanation. 

“Reid, look here! I’ve only just got in the queue 
with the rest of the world. I dare not lose my place. 
I want to identify myself with all that is normal and 
conventional and smooth and easy. D’you know what 
I’ve been all my life? A sort of pavement contor- 


The House of Broken Dreams 197 

tionist hating to be looked at. It’s been hell. A man 
like you can't understand. The under-dog is not a 
romantic creature, he’s not even a pathetic creature. 
He’s born with a loathsome, festering grouse that 
rises from his secret desire to be like other people. 
I can be like other people, a little better than most 
people. I’ve been a marked man all my life. If I 
married Fannie to-morrow it would all come up 
. . . the old story of my insurrection against the 

things I secretly coveted. I should become Tom Ripon, 
known to the police, the slum-grouser, the low-down 
Bolshevik. D’you think I want it now I’ve six thou¬ 
sand pounds a year and I’ve won free? I’m not the 
same man I was. The money’s made me over. I 
know it. I know it. I’m sleek, smug and I love the 
feeling. It’s the wine of life to me. I want a wife 
who shall minister to the happiness I have discovered. 
I thought Fannie would. She was a lady. I could 
gloat over that and get pleasure from it. She was 
small, with fine, useless hands and tiny feet. Eng¬ 
land’s not a free country. No country is free. Life 
isn’t free. A man is prisoned in the memories of 
his friends and enemies alike. All that socialistic stuff 
I spewed up during the war . . . it’s indissoluble, 

it is me. The world won’t let a man change. He is 
prisoned in their minds by the opinions he has uttered 
which are perhaps no longer his.” He flung around. 
“Look at you! You’re ordinary, but you can’t shake 
free of the pose you thought was you till you found 
out. You came here as an unimaginative, practical, 
prosaic man of affairs, devoid of romance or senti¬ 
mentality. This place has got you, squeezed you into 


198 The House of Broken Dreams 

fresh shapes, built up your imagination till it juts 
over everything, but people will go on expecting the 
limited, common or garden man of affairs. Once we 
have expressed our beliefs in words they become identi¬ 
fied with us and we with them, long after we have 
outgrown them and they us, long after they have be¬ 
come burdensome and hideous to us. We change, but 
the world sees us still as we painted ourselves before 
we grew, and we cower behind their vision of us, 
stunted and depressed by it. I wanted Fannie to help 
me maintain and evolve the personality I have become, 
the personality I was meant to be. If I marry her it 
allies me to the self I abhor. I’m not strong enough. 
Frankly, I’m not strong enough.” 

“This doesn’t serve any purpose,” said Angus Reid. 

“Look here! I beg of you. Oh! I know what I’m 
talking about. Get her ottt of this. Lie, cajole, 
frighten. She doesn’t know what she’s in for! I do. 
If they get her . . .if she goes to prison. Good 

God, man! it isn’t incidental . . . it’s the dust on 

a fine thing, and it is never, never the same afterwards. 
Nothing that lowers you in the sight of your fellow 
men is incidental. For the Lord’s sake, listen to me, 
Reid. I’m a prison bird. I know. It’s a fine novelty 
thing she’s doing ... but there’s got to be death 
at the end of it to make it come out right. Death must 
come at the end of all deeds of self-sacrifice to pre¬ 
serve their lustre and their beauty, or inevitable regret 
for them will eat in, inevitable common sense, inevi¬ 
table sense of proportion. That Kerr woman isn’t 
worth it, Philip and his future and his religion aren’t 
worth it; it would be all right if they executed her and 


The House of Broken Dreams 199 

she could die without knowing it . . . but she’ll 

know it. She’ll know it.” 

“I don’t see that this is achieving anything.” 

“I shall go and see Gladys Kerr to-morrow. You’re 
all crazy, all of you. You’ve lost consciousness of to¬ 
morrow. It isn’t to-day that counts. To-day is always 
all right, it is to-morrow. The O’Rane atmosphere 
has got you, Reid. Shake free of it.” 

in 

She opened the door herself and went grey at the 
sight of Ripon, so that it seemed as she leant against 
the yellowy red distemper of the passage as if she must 
fall to ashes before his eyes. Her hands were stained 
with apple coring. They picked, picked at the faded 
overall. 

“I haven’t brought news,” he said. “Are you 
alone ?” 

Her whole agonized body and face seemed to make 
a straightening gesture of relief. 

“Come in,” she said; “Philip is out.” 

It struck damp in the dining-room study. A minute 
fire burnt. She put some grey, almost fluffy looking 
bits of coke on and dimmed what flickering life there 
was. 

“You mustn’t let Fannie O’Rane do this thing, Mrs. 
Kerr,” he said. “You mustn’t.” 

She sat down and looked at the grey fire, and even 
her blue eyes seemed more faded than usual, as if they 
dwelt mysteriously behind a mist of thoughts. 

“Can’t you see,” she said quite simply and honestly, 


200 The House of Broken Dreams 

“how much easier, how much nicer it would be to 
own up? Then it would all be over and done with. 
Now it will never be over, never be done with. It will 
always be there.” 

The eloquence he had prepared for her suddenly 
went limp and useless in his mind, so that he could only 
throw it away. 

“I'd give anything to go to prison and work it out 
that way, but it can't ever be worked out,” she said. 
“I am in prison,” she told him. “I am in prison 
. . . my way out would be through the real 
prison.” 

His mind was empty of all the junk he had put there, 
so that her words crept in and made pictures. 

“.You wouldn't go to prison,” he said. “They'd let 
you off. They'd put it down to your condition. One 
could get doctors. It would be easy. They’ll collar 
Fannie O’Rane. Do you think the magistrate won't 
know the history of the O'Rane household when she 
comes before him? D’you think they won’t all know? 
You know what the O'Rane creed has been, to shelter 
the under-dog without reference to class or creed or 
colour. That’s heresy. It will count against her. 
Nothing will be said, she’ll be judged on the offence 
. . . but it’ll be there behind the magistrate’s face. 

It’s heresy to develop philanthropy in unorganized, un¬ 
authorized channels. Only the mind that is obsessed 
by the idea that humanity should be catalogued, com- 
partmented and systematized becomes a magistrate; it 
infuriates and inflames that type of mind that individ¬ 
uals should step in and side-track and harbour people 
that scream for classification and defined, organized 


The House of Broken Dreams 201 

treatment. It thwarts their sense of power; it out¬ 
rages their prestige." 

She made a queer little gesture, as if she blew his 
talk away like dust that obscured the subject they had 
under examination. 

“When is the trial?" she said. 

“It should have been within twenty-four hours, but 
there has been a mistake or something. It is to-mor¬ 
row." 

She had the face of one who has tidings of her own 
execution. 

“Shall I have to go?" 

“No." 

“I haven't told Philip." 

He had a moment of pity for her, perception of the 
aspects of the thing as it appeared to her; a life-long, 
level martyrdom without glory, abatement or relief. 

“I am going to be bright about it," she said. 

He could only stare at her, amazement in his odd, 
brilliant eyes. He caught the inner meaning of her 
words. She was actually smiling. He saw her lift 
that smile as an invisible crown of thorns and put it in 
position. 

“If I could only take Fannie’s place and get it over," 
she said. “But it will never, never be over for me. I 
couldn’t sleep last night. I thought how terrible to be 
a murderer and never found out." 

“Look here," he said sharply. “That isn’t healthy, 
Mrs. Kerr." 

“It will be over for Fannie," she said. “It’s really 
over now. If I told Philip the truth it would never be 
over for him either. It wouldn’t only be giving up 


202 The House of Broken Dreams 

his work and his mission; that would be the least of 
it. Who knows the truth ?” 

“Reid, myself, Fannie and the butler fellow who let 
the detective in.” 

“And Miss Proctor, Papa Pip and little Mr. Cole.” 

“Reid made me swear before I left I wouldn't tell. 
No one is to know but just us four.” 

“And my responsibility is to those I love best,” she 
said. “My husband and my child.” Her hands made 
queer little stroking gestures on her frock. “I am 
going to be a good woman,” she said. “I won’t even 
have to kill all my littlenesses, my love of clothes, my 
vanity. This thing has killed them, so that it is like 
building up again out of a great emptiness. You can¬ 
not think how empty life has become, just knowledge 
of this thing and I alone for ever and ever.” 

“Time wipes out things, you know, Mrs. Kerr.” 

She looked at him, the curious look that seemed to 
come out of something, something indriven and re¬ 
mote. 

“When are you going to be married?” she said 
quietly. 

“We are not.” 

“Is it this?” 

“Yes, in a way.” 

“She didn’t love you,” she told him, with queer im¬ 
personality. “She was only sorry for you. It isn’t 
the same thing. I didn’t know I loved my husband 
until he went away.” 

He stared at her blankly. 

“Good God! he hasn’t gone away ?” 

“Not in the way you mean. He’s still here. He 


The House of Broken Dreams 203 

will be always with me, more than most husbands. I 
don’t suppose you’ll understand; a woman would. It 
isn’t a question of what men do or where they are that 
keeps them close to women’s hearts. It is women who 
place them there, not the men themselves. When this 
thing came in I had to send Philip out. There was 
not room for both. It is not always being together 
that makes for intimacy and possession. I expect 
Fannie will marry Angus Reid.” 

“Why?” he flung at her. 

“Because she loves him.” 

He crossed to the window and stood staring out 
between the greyish coarseness of the Nottingham lace 
curtains. There was an aspidistra in a red pot on a 
blue china stand in the centre. He took a broad leaf 
and shredded it downwards so that it looked like grass. 
Two women passed and looked up at the rectory win¬ 
dows. They saw him, and he saw their stupid, in¬ 
stinctive thoughts. They did not look back, but they 
twittered about it all down the road. 

“Are you sorry?” she said. 

“I’d made preparation for her in my mind,” he said. 
“And it’s empty . . . that’s all. I looked to her 

to supply something . . . something I’d coveted 

a long time. It couldn’t have been . . . the shop¬ 

lifting wife of a late red revolutionist. I couldn’t 
have stood . . . the stink of it all. That’s the 

honest, absolute truth. She wasn’t worth the price.” 

“She’s fine,” she said slowly. “She was fine before 
this happened. She’s so simple, honest ... so 
big.” She paused. “Not like you are. Not like I 


204 The House of Broken Dreams 

was/’ Again she paused. “Are you going to the 
court?” 

“No.” 

“Will Kane and Judy and Pat have to know?” 

“No, no! I don’t think so. It won’t get into the 
papers; it’s too petty. No, that’ll be all right. You 
see, that’ll be all right. There are ways of keeping 
these things out.” 

“Legal ways?” 

“Not legal ways. It’s easy really. She has so 
amazingly, astoundingly few friends. It will be just 
as if she’d gone away on a little holiday.” 

“Will it be . . . long?” 

“No,” he said curtly. 

He heard her little quivering sigh. He made move¬ 
ments with his shoulders, which were not narrow, but 
sloped like the champagne shoulders of a Victorian 
beauty. His mind accompanied this brushing move¬ 
ment so that she got swept to the side and he could 
only see himself again and his own relation to this 
absurd, fantastic business on which he had come to her. 

“Why did you really come?” 

“Because I suppose I didn’t fully understand what 
was involved; your husband, his career, his calling, his 
spiritual obligations. ... I mean by that the 
thousands of weak people who crowd round him, who 
cling to him.” 

“Why did you really come?” she repeated. 

He said quite simply: “Because I don’t want to lose 
Fannie. I don’t want her to go to prison. That’s why 
I came. I thought I could talk you round. I can talk 
most people round.” 


The House of Broken Dreams 


205 


“You can’t talk me round.” 

“No, I knew that the moment I came in.” He 
paused. “Oddly enough,” he said, “I see your point 
of view. I don’t want to lose Fannie O’Rane.” 

“But you have lost her.” 

“You never quite lose a sentimentalist,” he said, “un¬ 
less you’re a perfect fool.” 

“Can you . . . could you come and tell me the 

result to-morrow? Don’t think I’m not grateful to 
Fannie; only it isn’t a gratitude I can express, even to 
myself.” 

“I’ll come round and tell you,” he said. 

The interview was totally unlike anything he had 
anticipated; that was because he had seen himself as 
the central figure. He had expected her to understand 
by a panoply of words, and he had understood her, had 
her whole attitude imparted to him almost without 
explanation. 

“I meant to say a lot when I came,” he said. 

“So little can be said about this thing.” 

“So you think I’ve lost Fannie?” he threw at her 
abruptly. 

“Yes.” 

“You said something about this fellow Reid. I 
thought they loathed each other.” 

“I think she thought up till quite a short time ago 
that she loathed him.” 

“Ah, well!” he said. 

They heard Philip come in. Ripon watched Gladys’s 
face. It did not lighten. It prepared itself, her whole 
attitude was a conscious preparation. He could not 
tell what lay behind it. She smiled at him. He gave 


2o6 The House of Broken Dreams 

Tom’s hand his usual, hard, nervous grip. He looked 
tired and rather worn. 

“Mrs. Morris came round, Philip,” she said. “She 
asked if you would go round and see her mother. 
Something about her will. They don’t expect her to 
last the night.” 

“I’ll £0 up at once. I shan’t have time for lunch, 
dear.” 

“I thought you wouldn’t; so I made a little oxo. It 
won’t take you a minute to drink it, dear.” 

“She thinks of everything,” Philip said to Tom. 
He watched her out of the room. 

IV 

It was a bright, crisp, gold and blue October morn¬ 
ing; the last of the leaves whirled slowly down like 
tinsel butterflies and the world seemed clean and young 
and hygienic and curiously unfurnished. 

“I think,” said Angus, “whatever happens, it would 
be wise for you to go away for a little while. Why 
not join Kane in Venice? I could arrange it all by 
cable. Won’t you leave it in my hands?” 

“If you wish,” said Fannie listlessly. 

Angus had told Papa Pip, Miss Proctor and little 
Mr. Cole at Fannie’s own request. The utter be¬ 
wilderment on their whitened old faces made him long 
to tell them the truth. They stared at him with blank, 
incredulous eyes. 

“It’s not a joke, Angus?” 

“It’s not a joke, Papa Pip, I assure you.” 

“But you can’t mean that Fannie . . 


The House of Broken Dreams 


207 

“Somebody will have to pay for this,” said Papa 
Pip. “There’s been a mistake.” 

“The thing is unthinkable!” 

“She’s shielding someone she was with.” 

“She was alone,” said Angus Reid. 

The whole thing was horrible; their dismay, their 
distress. He could not meet their eyes. 

“Well, there it is,” he said. “There it is.” 

“Then Fannie did it with a motive,” said little Miss 
Proctor finally. “She hasn’t revealed the motive, that’s 
all. We must show her we know ... we know.” 
Her voice trailed off into tears. 

“We must show her we know her,” said Angus. 
“That’s all that’s needed ... to remain just the 
same.” 

He went to Fannie. 

“I think you ought to tell them. Their distress is 
piteous, and their bewilderment.” 

“We can’t let anyone else know,” she said. 

“I’m not asking you to go back on it; only to make 
it a little easier for those who are going through it 
with you.” 

“I’m sorry,” she said. “We can’t let anyone else 
know.” 

On the morning of the trial they saw her off, a 
white-faced, perplexed little party of old people. He 
would not have them come with her. 

“My dear,” said little Mr. Cole, “we know there’s 
something behind all this. We want to know.” 

“We want to know,” echoed little Miss Proctor. 

She said very, very quietly, facing them in the little 
dark hall: 


208 The House of Broken Dreams 

“My dears, this isn’t anything to know. It is some¬ 
thing to forget. Kane and Judy and Pat, they mustn’t 
ever know you know. Perhaps I shall come straight 
back here; in any case Angus will come straight back. 
You’ll come straight back, won’t you, Angus?” 

“Yes,” said Angus. 

Papa Pip took her hand. He held it and looked at 
it as if it were a flower. 

“People who work in gardens,” he said slowly and 
tremulously, “you can’t fool ’em, dearie, you can’t fool 
’em. I don’t understand, but I know.” 

He held her hand a minute against his cheek and 
let her go. 

Little Mr. Cole said: “I refuse to see this as any¬ 
thing but a beau geste in disguise. Good God! will 
anyone persuade me that you -/” 

“Dear!” she said, and then again quiveringly: 
“Dears!” 

“When Angus comes back he may tell us?” coaxed 
Miss Proctor. 

She stood up very straight then and looked at them 
out of her level grey eyes. 

“You are not my friends if you believe there is any¬ 
thing to tell. You must just accept.” She ran very 
swiftly down the steps and out into the square with 
her lips twisted, and she waved to them absurdly, 
crazily, like a child who is striving to hide its emotion. 

Angus said: 

“Poor old things.” 

She said, in a quick, strangled voice: 

“It’s a good deal te ask of people . . . sheer 



The House of Broken Dreams 209 

faith, but if they can give it they'll be richer for it.” 
She paused. “You promise to go back at once?” 

“I promise to go back at once.” 

“It's so absurd to make a fuss about this thing. 
Isn’t it always absurd to make a fuss about something 
that has happened to millions before you . . . just 

because it has never happened to you, and doesn’t one 
always do it?” 

“I suppose so,” he said. 

“Poor Gladys this morning!” she said below her 
breath. 

He wondered if she saw herself at all in this affair. 

“Tom Ripon sent me some roses,” she said. 

He stared at her in amazement. 

“The absolute swine!” 

“You mustn’t, you can't judge, Angus. You don't 
know. They sent him to the coal mines; and then to 
prison. He went through hell. I know. He came 
back to us as if from a torture chamber . . . just 

like that mentally. It was terrible. You don’t know. 
The hand of the world against him. He had to be¬ 
have that way?” 

“What way?” 

“With me,” she said. “He wrote me a letter this 
morning. Such a letter, Angus! As if to-day were 
the end of the world and only he knew it. If you 
thrash a child nearly to death for lying it will lie again 
to avoid another beating. Don’t you see what I mean, 
Angus? Tom had to behave like that. It was almost 
an involuntary action. It was self-defence.” 

He shrugged his shoulders. 


210 The House of Broken Dreams 

“I believe I see these things with less sympathetic 
insight and more common sense/' he said. 

“The old god,” she flung at him, smiling. 

“The old god,” he said. 


v 

The court was small, dark, almost deserted, and 
smelt of Jeyes’ Fluid and roses. An old woman in a 
tartan shawl sat in the seats reserved for the public, 
furtively tying up red roses. Angus watched her wire 
the fallen head of a rose on to a stem, and wondered 
whether she were there as witness or spectator. She 
did not seem to be listening or watching. She was 
absorbed in her richly perfumed merchandise, beside 
her sat a small, wan creature with its hands folded and 
the look of curious blankness worn by the child who is 
consciously trying to be good. 

“It’s the magistrate who knows me,” Fannie 
whispered. 

A man was before the magistrate, a little pale man 
with a waistcoat, a tie and a nose that all rode up. He 
had an invincible air of good humour. 

“I could stand up all by myself,” he kept repeating 
cheerfully. “I did stand up all by myself, sir, I assure 
you.” 

Angus saw the detective who had arrested Fannie 
at the back of the court. He was talking to a sergeant. 
He was grinning away cheerfully. He looked extraor¬ 
dinarily homely and at home. The whole place was 
like a London office; everybody had time to spare. 


The House of Broken Dreams 211 

He could even hear a typewriter clicking away some¬ 
where. 

Then suddenly he became aware that his hands were 
so tightly gripped that the palms had become like blot¬ 
ting paper. He opened them, and the ordinary air 
caressed them like a little wind. 

Fannie was no longer beside him. Fannie had gone 
to join the little stream of human traffic that meandered 
through this dark court every Wednesday. 

Already she seemed to have lost something of her 
personality. She sat with her hands quietly clasped 
He wondered if she were frightened. He would have 
liked to jump across to her, to seize her hand and 
scamper madly out of the place with her, but he knew 
that on that instant the place would spring to life; and 
he wanted it to stay quiet and still as it was; its peace¬ 
fulness was like darkness that cloaked terror. 

A sergeant came out and looked round. He was 
very smart. His hair went back in a lick. 

Angus felt his mind grow black and hot with hatred 
of it all; and the hatred poured out of his own utter 
impotence, like an immense volume of steam out of a 
tiny hole. 

If only someone knew the truth. If only he could 
go and talk to Bobbie. If there were only someone 
who understood the ridiculousness and the splendid 
idiocy and the crazy beauty of it all. 

Then the blind steam of hate cleared, and he saw 
that other people’s ignorance made a bond between 
himself and Fannie. 

At that moment she looked at him and smiled. 


212 The House of Broken Dreams 

The little man was saying : “Thank you, sir,” and 
grinning all over his face. 

A girl slithered into a seat in front of him. She 
looked half apprehensive, half pleased. He judged it 
to be her first visit and in the nature of an experiment. 
She opened her little attache-case noiselessly, glanced 
at her knitting, touched the needles tentatively and 
closed it again. She looked at Angus and bent back 
to whisper: 

“What’s the charge?” 

“Drunk,” he said briefly. 

She settled down to watch proceedings as if it were 
a film just explained to her. 

It was extraordinary how difficult he found it to 
concentrate, to absorb the reality of it. His mind 
formed itself into an absurdly rigid protection for 
Fannie without heeding particularly the thing against 
which it strove to protect. 

He heard her name called. 

The name went winging through him and touched 
his heart in an odd way like a chord of music. 

The girl in front of him whispered cautiously and 
nervously: 

“Did they say petty larceny ?” 

He thought the detective’s evidence would be suf¬ 
ficient, but the firm of drapers from which the crepe de 
Chine was stolen had sent a solicitor with glossy hair 
and glossy clothes and a glossy manner to match. 

The flower-woman got up and went out, and the 
scent of roses went with her and the Jeyes’ Fluid was 
left. 


The House of Broken Dreams 213 

“The prisoner comes from a family notorious for 
their sympathy with . . 

“That is irrelevant to the case,” said the magistrate 
curtly. 

The glossy lawyer sat down. 

The detective rose. He held the crepe de Chine in 
his hand as if he were about to put it up for auction. 
He glanced round the empty court as if he were sorry 
there were not more prospective customers. He began 
to speak in exactly the voice he had used in the 
O’Ranes’ drawing-room. It was very odd. It was 
as if he sought to impress his hearers with the excel¬ 
lency of his training and instincts by his voice, a woolly 
old sheep dog barking to show he was also an excellent 
house dog. 

Fannie’s was the last case to be called. 

One of the policemen yawned tremendously. The 
girl with the attache-case smuggled a chocolate out 
and stuffed it furtively into her mouth. 

The glossy lawyer was glaring at the thinnest gold 
watch Angus had ever seen. 

Something cold trickled ticklingly down the side of 
his nose. It was a bead of perspiration. His fore¬ 
head was bedewed with it. 

Fannie had got seven days in the second division. 


Chapter IX 


i 

T T E wanted to run back to the house of dreams, to 
set the streets and the people racing by him like 
a cinematograph film, to obtain a sense of speed. He 
found he could only walk quietly and steadily, carrying 
his memory of her unsmiling tranquillity preciously up¬ 
right as if it were an egg. He did not want to lose it. 
He wanted to transmit his impression of it, as comfort 
to the people who waited. 

As he turned into the square he saw Ripon emerge 
from the house and run swiftly in the opposite direc¬ 
tion to himself. 

He was amazed. 

The butler opened the door as his hand touched the 
bell. 

He said: 

“Oh, sir! Oh, sir!” and then, “Can’t you keep it 
out of the papers? Can’t you keep it out of the 
papers ?” 

“You knew?” he said. 

“Mr. Ripon came here almost as soon as you left 
with Miss Fannie. He had them telephone him the 
result through from the police station—a friend, I 
think. He was walking up and down, up and down 
like a mad thing, talking.” 

214 


The House of Broken Dreams 215 

He went upstairs quietly, into the drawing-room 
where they waited. 

“She was tremendously brave,” he said. “I wish 
you could have seen her.” 

“Did she break down ?” queried Miss Proctor. 

“They rang through to Ripon,” Papa Pip said. “We 
knew almost at once. He’s gone to tell Mrs. Kerr.” 

“Not a prison-van?” queried Miss Proctor. 

“No, they hire a conveyance from a local con¬ 
tractor.” 

“A wardress?” 

“No, they have a sort of matron in connection with 
the police station that they call in, but it wasn’t neces¬ 
sary in a case like this. Just a policeman.” 

“My God!” said little Mr. Cole. 

“She was so quiet about it all,” said Angus. 

Miss Proctor began to cry. 

“When she comes out she’s going away for a little 
while. She’s going to join Kane for a few months, 
before Kane goes East. I think it will be wise.” 

He paused. There was some emotion in the room 
he could not fathom. He could feel it as a blind man 
might feel the presence of something unseen, infinitely 
disquieting, undefined. 

“Oh, dear!” sobbed Miss Proctor. “Oh, dear!” 

Papa Pip went to the window and stood tapping on 
the glass. 

“I suppose you know that when Ripon knew about 
this case he refused to marry Fannie,” Angus said. 

No one answered. 

“Well?” he said, a little impatiently. 


2l6 The House of Broken Dreams 

“He is what life made him/' said little Mr. Cole un¬ 
expectedly. 

“I am surprised at his coming here/' 

“Do you suppose he didn’t want to know too,” put 
in Miss Proctor. 

“Look here,” he began. 

He stopped. He could not quite tell why Miss 
Proctor went on sobbing. 

“If it hadn’t been a magistrate who knew, she’d 
have got off,” said Papa Pip. 

“Then it was Ripon’s fault she was convicted,” 
Angus put in sharply. “He was the cause of the 
O’Ranes first coming in touch with the police. He’s 
caused nothing but trouble and wrong to the family 
from the first. Look here, I’m going to give orders 
for him not to be admitted.” 

“Oh!” expostulated Mr. Cole sharply. “You mustn’t 
do that. You mustn’t do that on any account!” His 
whole manner betrayed intense anxiety and appre¬ 
hension. 

“Fannie wouldn’t like it,” Miss Proctor swept into 
the conversation. “Fannie would be furious. I as¬ 
sure you, Angus, I assure you it would be an absolutely 
false move.” 

“It would be very, very foolish, very dangerous to 
do that,” said Papa Pip. 

They were all watching him. 

“But she said she didn’t want to see him again. I 
assure you I was here. I . . . ” 

“But something has happened since,” interrupted 
Miss Proctor eagerly. “Something wonderful and 
beautiful.” 


217 


The House of Broken Dreams 

“In connection with Tom Ripon.” 

They all nodded their old heads solemnly. They 
were consumed with eagerness and excitement. 

“Am I not to know what this marvellous thing is? 
You didn’t know anything about it when I left here.” 

“No. It was while we were all waiting anxiously 
that Tom told us.” 

“We are pledged to secrecy,” said little Mr. Cole. 

“When Fannie is with us again you’ll know,” said 
Papa Pip, his face radiant. “That is Tom Ripon’s 
condition.” 

“I don’t understand,” Angus Reid said. “I thought 
you all loathed and mistrusted him. What has hap¬ 
pened in so short a time to obviously change your point 
of view?” 

“A man may show you by his actions suddenly that 
your previous conception of him was wrong,” said 
Mr. Cole. 

“I await such a revelation with interest,” said Angus 
Reid curtly. 


ii 

The leaves were off the trees, a frost spangled every¬ 
thing coldly on the morning Fannie left Holloway. 

No one met her at her own request. No one glanced 
at her. 

She was very composed, pale, smiling. 

The grey pile of Holloway frowned behind her 
against a grey sky. She moved away from it a little 
blindly. She had no particular sense of freedom or 
consciousness of escape. It was only that the 


218 The House of Broken Dreams 

neighbourhood was unfamiliar. She halted by the 
Athenaeum a minute waiting for a taxi; trams and 
buses lumbered by filled with girls with attache-cases, 
and young men with last year’s overcoats smelling of 
camphor. 

All over London, winter was shaking out its furs 
and feathers and its canopy of soot and smoke; above 
her thin scarves of yellow, grey, white and black smoke 
were up-blown into the grey skies. 

An empty taxi stopped at the public house at the 
corner of Hillmarton Road, and the man went in for 
a drink. She waited until he came out again and then 
engaged him. 

It was all extraordinarily undramatic. 

In a letter she had received from Angus he told her 
he had procured her ticket for Venice, booked her 
passage, and that Miss Proctor had her boxes packed, 
addressed and corded in the hall. 

Mrs. Fellowes and the Professor would be enchanted 
to have her. 

It was pleasant to be organized, to let one’s mind lie 
fallow. 

To-night she would be on the sea, and then the train, 
and then with Kane in the Venice she remembered 
so curiously vividly in her very early days; and then 
perhaps her personality would function again and cast 
off this queer, close-fitting state of suspended anima¬ 
tion that was not without restfulness and peace. 

London looked very beautiful even to her rather in¬ 
different eyes as she drove through it; the sky had 
lightened and lightened until it was more silver than 
grey, with a pallid sun riding shrouded behind it like a 


The House of Broken Dreams 219 

radiant moon, and to the colourless beauty the stiff 
limbs of the leafless trees seemed to rear themselves 
with stark beauty; the houses behind their conventional 
railings lay crouched in enchanted sleep; their drawn 
blinds peered through the trellis of the trees like shut 
eyes. 

“London is beautiful,” she thought, without regret 
at leaving it or pleasure at regaining it. 

When the taxi turned into the square something in 
her awoke like a spring released or a pendulum 
touched: her old anxieties and affections flooded back 
on her and drowned the drowsy acquiescence that had 
been hers. 

She jumped out of the taxi briskly and ran up the 
steps. 

The little butler opened the door instantly—he must 
have been behind, and she found her hand gripped. 

“Aw! Miss Fannie!” he choked. “Miss Fannie!” 

“Now!” she warned cheerfully, “Now! no heroics!” 

“They’re in the drawing-room,” he said. “And 
Mr. Ripon.” 

She frowned at that, and at him. 

“Why?” 

“They’re as thick as thieves. He’s been here every 
day.” 

She stood with her foot on the bottom step, her 
dark eyebrows contracted a little, her lips pressed tight 
together. 

“And Mr. Reid?” 

“The place is full of flowers he sent. They came 
last night, but he hasn’t been near. They don’t want 
him. Miss Proctor and that lot. I know that.” 


220 The House of Broken Dreams 

She could see her boxes corded and labelled as Angus 
had said in his letter. She went up another step and 
then turned back; at that moment the sun came 
through, a little pale lemon wisp creeping through the 
glass above the massive front door. It went licking 
languidly along the polished floor, and seemed to curl 
up in the centre of a Persian rug. She watched it for 
a second, and the little Punchinello butler watched her; 
then, without any further words, she went quietly up¬ 
stairs. 

She was glad Angus Reid was not there, immensely 
glad. The knowledge caused a quiet happiness to coil 
up in her heart just as the sunbeam had coiled up on 
the rug, diffusing brightness all round it. 

She had an empty mind for Angus Reid; the slate 
of her impression was wiped clear for him to write on. 
During the week of lonely hours she had jettisoned her 
prejudices against him and her obvious attraction to 
him. She believed, in her curious ignorance of human 
psychology, that she was ready to start again as if they 
were two people meeting for the first time. In her 
sublime lack of knowledge she ignored the deep in¬ 
dentations he had made on her imagination, even on 
her character and beliefs. 

Once you have started a relationship there is no such 
thing as starting all over again. That is the only really 
tragic thing about marriage and the only really satis¬ 
factory thing about friendship. 

She opened the door of the drawing-room very 
quietly and went in. 

The room seemed to lift itself to her mind in wel¬ 
come much more than its occupants. They sat quite 


The House of Broken Dreams 221 

still, blind and oblivious, but the dapple of firelight 
and pale sunshine on familiar objects was like the out¬ 
stretching of friendly hands. Her clear voice broke 
a little : 

‘‘Well, my dears!” 

Yet when they gathered round her, petting her with 
their hands and their words, making much of her, she 
was aware that they had not that clear, whole-hearted 
welcome the room had held. There were reservations. 

She nodded coolly to Tom Ripon. He stood very 
erect, very white, quite unreadable. She kept him out 
of the atmosphere of welcoming consciously, drawing 
Papa Pip, Miss Proctor and little Mr. Cole to her as 
mental protection in all sorts of little feminine ways, 
and thereby becoming disquietingly aware of all sorts 
of new contours in their make-up. 

“Oh! my dear!” said Miss Proctor, “was it very 
dreadful ?” 

“It was like a terribly strict school. I made button¬ 
holes in men’s shirts and read ‘The Lamp Lighter’ 
from the prison library.” 

Miss Proctor shivered and little Mr. Cole looked at 
her with tragic eyes. Yet she could not disabuse her 
mind of the idea that these were mere gestures of 
friendship and behind it their minds were given pas¬ 
sionately to things far removed from her. She was 
human enough to be disappointed and big enough for 
it not to make any real difference. She was animated 
by the old tender, maternal and protective love for them 
that had always existed. 

“I have had no horrible experiences,” she said, 
“nothing. Everyone was kind to me, kind and curt. 


222 


The House of Broken Dreams 

Tell me what you have all been doing. I seem to have 
been away a long time. ,, 

She felt suppressed excitement take an upward leap 
all round her. 

They seemed to glance at Tom Ripon mutely, like 
children, for permission to tell. 

At that moment the telephone went. 

‘Til answer it,” she said. “I’ll answer it!” 

“It’ll be Angus,” Miss Proctor said. Her voice 
sounded flat and disappointed. 

Tom Ripon’s brilliant eyes narrowed. They jewelled 
his face, revealing nothing. His hand clenched and 
unclenched on the mantelpiece. 

“There seems mystery,” she challenged, smiling, 
without glancing at him, and ran downstairs. 

The little Punchinello butler gave her the receiver. 

“Mr. Reid, Miss Fannie,” he said. 

She heard Angus’s voice with its old commonplace 
kindness, its evenness. 

“Is that you, Fannie? How are you?” 

“Pm very well,” she said. 

“May I come round?” 

“Of course,” 

“May I come round now ?” 

“Of course.” 

Her mind seemed to empty itself and fill again quite 
differently. 

They were talking eagerly when she went in, but the 
voices ceased and the eagerness was immediately 
hidden. 

“Something wonderful has happened,” Miss Proctor 


The House of Broken Dreams 223 

said nervously. “We . . . Mr. Ripon thinks it 

better to tell you when Angus comes.” 

She knew then quite definitely that her hold on them 
had loosened. They were not even really very in¬ 
terested. 

She looked at Ripon. His eyes met hers appeal¬ 
ingly. Their brightness was less apparent; they were 
sad with an animal sadness like an ignored dog, that 
moved her in spite of herself. They seemed to say, 
“Watch this trick. I am doing it for you.” 

“Why must we wait for Angus ?” she said. 

The bell went; they heard Angus running up the 
stairs. He burst in upon their silence. 

“Why, Fannie!” he said. 

He looked extraordinarily excited, happy, virile. 
Like a smooth olive-skinned Italian, and his brown eyes 
laughed in his brown face. 

“You look awfully well,” he said. “Why! splendid!” 

He took her two hands and held them out, and stared 
at her with his glowing, appraising eyes. He was 
aware of no one else, whereas no one, until he came, 
had been really aware of her. 

“We are very glad to have her back,” Miss Proctor 
said. 

He woke up then. He admitted them rather self¬ 
consciously to his notice. Then he saw Tom Ripon. 
His whole face and pose went quite blank. It was 
like blinds drawn. 

“Hullo, everyone,” he said, even his voice sounded 
different. 

She said: 


224 The House of Broken Dreams 

“Something exciting has happened while I have been 
away, Angus. They were waiting to tell us.” 

“Nothing has happened yet, dear,” said little Mr. 
Cole. “It has only been arranged, only arranged. 

I—my book of poems is going to be brought out at 
last. I never hoped! I never dared hope. Mr. 
Ripon has arranged with a publisher. He is going to 
spend hundreds on advertising! My dream is coming 
true. Think of it, my dream is coming true!” 

“And I am to have my audition at the Queen’s Hall!” 
quavered Miss Proctor. “It was all arranged while 
you were away. Tom wanted it to be a surprise for 
you. Oh! Fannie, think of it!” 

“And I am to have a little florist’s business,” chimed 
in Papa Pip. “I’ve always known I could make a big 
success of one.” 

She looked at Tom Ripon. He was standing there 
staring at her with his hungry, unhappy eyes. He 
seemed to be saying, “There is my trick. It is the best 
I can do. The best I can do.” 

She saw only the beauty of it. Dreams come true! 
It took her heart and twisted it away from common 
sense like beautiful music. She submerged her sense 
of proportion in the sight of their old happy, expect¬ 
ant, rejoicing faces. She was again within the 
precincts of her fairy-tale world where all things were 
possible and everything comes true. 

“Oh! my dear, my dear!” cried Miss Proctor. 
“Isn’t it wonderful?” 

Their happiness was a strong emotion, the room, 
the very air seemed full of it. She yielded herself to 
it gladly. 


The House of Broken Dreams 225 

She said: 

“Oh! Tom, it is splendid of you! Splendid!” 

She knew it for atonement, his whole attitude showed 
that; but she was too generous to accept it as that. In 
her imagination, in her voice, it became magnified to 
a gift. 

She found herself crying, but at the same time she 
felt as if she had left her own personality a long way 
behind, a little forgotten, ownerless thing, so closely 
she identified herself with their happiness and excite¬ 
ment. 

“Oh! it’s wonderful,” she said. “It’s just won¬ 
derful!” 

She held out her hands to Tom Ripon emotionally, 
and he seemed to press his gift into them in a firm 
hard way as if it were a personal gift to her. 

“It’s lovely of you,” she said. “All these years 
they’ve been dreaming. Why! it’s like a fairy-tale 
come true.” 

“You were at the back of it,” Tom Ripon said. 
“All the time you were at the back of it.” His eyes 
had regained their old queer hard brilliance, but un¬ 
derneath lay nervousness and fear. 

“Good Lord! Ripon,” said Angus starkly, “you 
can’t do this thing!” 

Miss Proctor cried out in a sharp, ugly voice which 
was as utterly unfamiliar as the expression on her 
face: 

“I knew you’d try and queer it. I told the others 
so. I knew. I said so, didn’t I ?” 

“Why, Angus!” Fannie expostulated. 


226 The House of Broken Dreams 

He turned to her. He was as she had first known 
him. 

“You mustn't permit this thing. Use your com¬ 
mon sense." His voice was sharp, admonishing and 
yet appealing. It was as if he pleaded with her to 
grow up and understand, because much, much more 
depended on her understanding than had ever done 
before. 

“But it's beautiful," she said. 

“Can’t you see?" 

They were all staring at him with pale faces and 
hostile eyes, and all their thoughts of him were gnarled 
and twisted with hatred. It showed in their old faces 
and wrote on them an ugly sadness that she could not 
bear to look upon. 

“I don’t see what it has to do with you," Tom Ripon 
said. “It is my money that is assuring their success." 

“Common humanity . . .’’ began Angus hotly. 

He looked right into Fannie’s eyes. 

The old people moved nearer to her. They seemed 
to be crowding Angus out of the room, out of her 
thoughts. 

“But all their lives they’ve been waiting just for 
this," she exclaimed without anger, only with a vivid 
hurt surprise that he could not see how unbelievably 
beautiful it all was. 

“Ripon’s taking advantage of them," Angus said 
hotly, and once more his ridiculous commonplace hon¬ 
esty betrayed him; he saw the surge of it carry her 
right away from him on a wave of the old undisguised 
antagonism; the common footing there had been 
slipped away, the old temperamental chasm between 


The House of Broken Dreams 227 

the idealist and the realist yawned tremendously be¬ 
tween them. He made one desperate snatch at her 
across it. 

“Fannie, I simply can’t explain to you here.” 

“How do you know we won’t succeed?” Miss Proc¬ 
tor flung at him. “Is that what you’re afraid of? It 
isn’t your money that’ll be lost if we don’t. Oh! 
Fannie, don’t listen to him!” 

“There’s nothing to explain,” said Fannie coldly, 
quietly. “Everything I see beautiful you see ridicu¬ 
lous or fantastic; and this is just one thing more we 
see totally differently. I believe they will succeed. 
Why shouldn’t they? Why shouldn’t they?” 

“You leave me nothing else to say.” He was very 
quiet; he turned to Ripon. “I’ll go to your rooms and 
wait for you,” he said. 

Miss Proctor flung round on Ripon. 

“You won’t let anything he says make you go back 
on us?” 

“Anything he says will only strengthen me in my 
original intentions,” Ripon reassured them. 

hi 

Tom Ripon came to the point at once. 

He said simply and crisply: 

“You cooked your goose with the lot of them.” 

Angus would have given much to hit him across 
his smiling face. 

“What is your game?” he countered quietly. 

“Fannie.” Ripon sat down and lit a cigarette. 


228 


The House of Broken Dreams 


“Fannie, if you want to know. D’you think I care a 
damn about the rest of them? ,, 

“You beast.” 

“I know what you want to do, my restrained and 
logical friend. You want to make a holy mess of me 
and the room and everything. I’m not sure you won’t 
do it. Rather an appealing story to take to Fannie. 
I’ve met your sort before; they’re a darn sight worse 
over a war or women than my sort. Look at things 
with your passion for common sense. Whatever you 
do can’t stop me giving those idiots the send-off they’ve 
been waiting for all their lives, and you can’t stop 
Fannie seeing me as a hero and loving me for it. The 
more you object the more heroic I look. It’s rather a 
neat situation. I had to do something pretty spectacu¬ 
lar to wipe out the rather unfortunate impression I 
made over the prison affair. As a matter of fact, dur¬ 
ing the week she’s been there I’ve realized that I want 
Fannie more than I’ve ever wanted anything in my 
life. The things I’ve wanted I’ve had so far. Wait 
a minute! Let me finish! I don’t care a damn about 
Papa Pip, the poet, or the whole bunch of them, but 
they were the only means I had to get back to Fannie, 
and I’ll pour money out on them, rivers of it if neces¬ 
sary. Wait a minute! I’ve nothing to fear from 
frankness with you. I want to marry Fannie. She’ll 
round off my life. It’s ragged and ugly. I want that 
girl. She’s wonderful. It’s a . . . it’s what 

that little Cole chap calls a beau geste of mine. It got 
her back like a bird. I’m going to see this thing 
through with loud music. That’s my scheme. I’ve 
got Fannie O’Rane eating out of my hand. I want 


The House of Broken Dreams 229 

her for my wife. All right, hit out, my friend. It’ll 
make your case a darn sight worse than it is.” 

“My God! . . .” 

“Hold a minute. I’m not handicapped by any con¬ 
ventional gentlemanly qualms or anything like that. 
I’m out for what I want. I know all you were going 
to spit out about the cruelty to the old people, broken 
dreams and all that. I tell you plainly I don’t care. 
It’s a means to an end. They’re a means to an end. 
Everything I do from now on is going to be a means 
to an end . . . Fannie. I’ve only got my foot 

in with this . . . but the rest of me is going to 

follow. Fannie’s going off to-morrow morning. She 
won’t open your letters. You’re done. If I’ve any 
trouble I’ll tell her the thing I found out from O’Rane’s 
lawyer . . . That you’re supporting and educat¬ 

ing the whole tribe. That’ll touch the O’Rane pride 
like a knife. I’ve got my cards ready to play. I don’t 
care whether they’re dirty cards or not. I’ll play ’em 
to win my game. Fannie’s training has made her soft 
and blind. I can win her through that. It’s the only 
way I can win her. There’s one side of her shrinks 
from me and the other isn’t awake. I’ve heard you 
say she’s living in a fairy-tale. It’s the truth. You 
tried to drag her out. The thing to do is to get in too. 
I’m in. Ever since I broached this thing to the old 
people I’ve been the family pet.” 

“Haven’t you any imagination? Good Lord! 
Ripon, apart from all of us, you can’t break their 
dreams. They’re all they’ve got to keep ’em sweet 
and clean and sane, and they’re old; why, they’ve all 
of them got one foot in the grave. You can’t do this 


230 The House of Broken Dreams 

ugly thing. It’s worse than destroying a child's faith. 
Have some pity, man! I couldn't say it in front of 
them.” 

“I know all you were going to say and I agree with 
all of it. It was the only thing to make Fannie accept 
and tolerate me, and I had to get back somehow. 
You’ve broken her dreams all right, family unity and 
all that. D’you think she doesn’t bear you a grudge?” 

“I don't think that enters into it.” 

“You know damn well it does.” 

They glanced at each other. 

“Look here;” Angus was temperate because of his 
sudden fear for Fannie, “what good would it do to tell 
Fannie? Apart from the caddishness of it what 
earthly good would it do?” 

“If I thought it would do the slightest good, Reid, 
I shouldn’t hesitate, but for the moment I agree with 
you, it does nothing. It achieves nothing. Look 
here, I want Fannie. Get that into your mind. I’m 
going to have her. I’m not handicapped by any little 
merry gentlemanly instincts. In my own way, and it’s 
a way you don’t understand any more than if I were 
an Eskimo, I love Fannie. I can’t see the slightest 
good in life without her. I’m afraid of life without 
her. It’s ugly and meaningless. If I get her I’ll be 
good to her. That surprises you, but I will. She’d 
be happy mothering me, and God knows I need mother¬ 
ing. She’s a lady. You don’t know how I worship 
ladies. Why should you? All Fannie's little ways 
. . . the way she keeps herself . . . it’s 

poetry to me.” 

“Good Lord! you talk like a woman!” 


The House of Broken Dreams 231 

Ripon laughed without a trace of self-consciousness, 
the glitter had come back to his eyes, the restlessness 
to his gesticulating hands. He began to walk up and 
down, up and down the expensive, sombre room. 

“I don’t care a jot for anyone in this world except 
Fannie.” 

“But those old people have got their lives to finish 
out. It’s such an ugly thing you’re doing, Ripon. 
Haven’t you any imagination?” 

“Lots,” laughed Ripon. 

Angus Reid clenched his hands. 

“If you break their dream there’s nothing left for 
the three of them.” 

“I’ll keep them. I swear I’ll keep them.” 

“It isn’t the point.” 

“It’s the only point that interests me.” 

“Let me explain.” 

“Explain away,” said Ripon. 

Angus pleaded for Papa Pip, for Miss Proctor and 
Mr. Cole. He leant forward a little in his chair with 
his hands clasped and his eyes following Ripon as he 
walked up and down, up and down. Ripon stopped 
him with a gesture. 

“Look here,” he said, “you plead very well. It’s 
quite useless. They haven’t any right to those dreams. 
If they hadn’t been artificially protected they’d have 
been broken long ago. Try and get it into your head 
that I know they must be broken and I don’t care. 

. . . I’m going to walk over the bits to Fannie. 
That’s all that matters. If you interfere in any way 
I shall tell Fannie how much they’ve all got a year, and 
what you’re doing for Kane, Judy and Pat. I think in 


232 The House of Broken Dreams 

her present reaction against you she’d almost marry to 
be free of the obligation. Keep out of it. Keep out 
of it.” He paused and grinned. “I don’t know that 
it would be altogether a bad thing to let you do what 
you want to. Come on then!” 

Angus slammed the door as he went out. 

He dare not trust himself another moment in the 
room. 

The next morning Fannie left London for Venice 
and Kane without his having seen her. 

IV 

Angus went up to see Marjorie Money penny at 
Hampstead. 

He told her of Tom Ripon’s latest scheme seated 
over the fire. She listened quietly, watching him 
covertly, impatiently, with her brilliant blue eyes. That 
was the keynote of her present attitude towards him, 
an adult impatience towards childishness. 

“Of course,” she said, “it’s all a bid for Fannie 
O’Rane. She’s rather lucky to have a man want to 
marry her at all.” 

He raised his head in a queer, jerky way and stared 
at her in amazement. 

“In Heaven’s name, Marjorie, why that attitude?” 

Her irritation boiled over. 

“My dear Angus, it’s all very well to live up in the 
clouds ... if you can, but the rest of the world 
doesn’t regard prison in the same way as presentation 
at Court. I can’t explain what I mean exactly, be¬ 
cause I’m not clever, but it seems to me that you regard 


The House of Broken Dreams 233 

Fannie O’Rane’s exploit in exactly the same indulgent 
way as the public judges a great actress’s immorality, 
a sort of divine licence. I simply cannot see the 
sense in you. If you do a thoroughly mean, rotten 
thing, like pinching things from a big shop, you’ve 
done it whether you’re a queen or whoever you are. 
I should like to say here and now that I haven’t under¬ 
stood you for quite a long time. You’re not the same, 
Angus. You say no one knows of this unfortunate 
episode. I wonder what your mother ... or my 
mother would say if they knew.” 

“I know I’ve changed in all sorts of ways, Marjorie. 
I’ve changed so much that I wouldn’t care if they did 
know; I mean, I should be sorry for them, but not 
sorry for myself or Fannie, because it wouldn’t alter 
us.” 

“I suppose she’s very pretty,” she said, without any 
particular malice; “that’s at the bottom of it.” 

The new maid brought in tea, drew the curtains, 
shutting out the wind writhings of the bare branches, 
and they were together in the low-ceilinged little box 
of a room. 

“Why do you come up here to see me?” she chal¬ 
lenged quietly. 

“For selfish reasons. Because I’m so darn miser¬ 
able and perplexed and up a gum-tree generally. You 
simply don’t see the pathos of it, you know, Marjorie— 
Miss Proctor like a young girl on the eve of her wed¬ 
ding. I went to see them all in their rooms yesterday. 
They tolerate me.” 

“Then why do you go?” 


234 The House of Broken Dreams 

“Because I just can’t stay away, that’s the honest 
truth.” 

She tapped her eternal knitting needles against her, 
teeth. 

“Look here, Angus. It isn’t any good my pretend¬ 
ing to understand, because I frankly don’t. You 
couldn’t expect anyone to understand who’d known 
you in the old days. You aren’t the same man,” she 
said. “Even mother noticed. She said the other day: 
‘What’s the matter with Angus, Marjorie? He seems 
all of a dither when he comes here lately.’ ” 

“I’ve talked to Fannie about you a lot.” 

“If you’ve talked to her about me as much as you 
have talked about her to me-” 

“You’re not angry, Marjorie?” 

“I’m fed up,” said Marjorie; “that’s the plain, hon¬ 
est truth.” 

He lit a cigarette and spoke judiciously. 

“I think I understand, Marjorie. I’ve known you 
so many years. I suppose I imposed on the friend¬ 
ship. We seemed to think alike in the old days. At 
first, when I didn’t understand the O’Ranes, it was 
such a tremendous relief to come up here and talk my 
troubles out. I take advantage of it. You’ve been 
infinitely patient with me.” 

“I haven’t,” said Marjorie quietly. “If I had been 
you could have kept on coming. That’s just it, Angus, 
for such a long time now I’ve been so impatient. I’ve 
hardly been able to conceal it, and when you’ve gone 
I’ve been so furious with myself for keeping it all in. 
It seems to me that you’ve become soft, and I hate soft 
men. I hate them. I think it’s perfectly absurd of 



The House of Broken Dreams 235 

you to spend your money secretly on the O’Ranes like 
you do.” 

“But if we all took that attitude . . 

“If we all took that attitude we should know ex¬ 
actly where we were. You’re up to the neck in O’Rane- 
ism, Angus, that’s the fact of the matter, and you’ve 
lost the faculty of seeing straight. You keep writing 
to this girl and writing to her, and making a perfect 
fool of yourself, and getting no answer. Haven’t you 
any pride?” 

“Not the sort you mean.” 

“What sort do I mean?” countered Marjorie quietly. 

“The pride that simply must have recognition of its 
love even to exist.” 

“Why did you tell me about the prison? You 
needn’t have?” 

“Fannie asked me to.” 

She opened her blue eyes wide; an expression of 
distaste crossed her face. “She wants to meet you 
when she comes back, and she thought it more honest 
that you should know first.” 

“Is everyone to know?” 

“No one in the world knows, or is likely to, except 
Ripon, the old people, Gladys Kerr, who happened to 
be there, and myself, and one can rely on the discretion 
of those people. It is as if it had never been. I don’t 
know why she insisted so particularly on your know- 
in g. 

“I think I do,” said Marjorie. “I suppose she isn’t 
shielding anyone, Angus? I suppose she really did 
steal those things ?” 


236 The House of Broken Dreams 

“As far as I know she did really take them and she 
is not shielding anyone,” Angus answered steadily. 

Marjorie nodded her head. 

“Well, she’s quite right,” she averred. ‘‘I don’t 
want to know her. Even if she was shielding someone 
I still wouldn’t want to know her. I don’t want to 
know anyone who has been to prison. I’m very sorry, 
Angus. Please don’t look at me like that. I am not 
at all unique.” 

“She wants a woman friend so frightfully badly. 
You don’t know how curiously lonely and isolated she 
is. When she comes back at Christmas it will all be 
so different. She’s leaving Kane in Paris with Bobbie 
Buttons’ mother. Judy and Pat will have got their 
own interests and the old people their own home.” 

“She’ll have you and Tom Ripon,” said Marjorie 
antagonistically. “Besides, I wouldn’t want to know a 
girl who hadn’t pride enough to keep a man turned 
down after he turned her down. I’m very sorry, 
Angus, but you see she hasn’t bewitched me.” 

“But it’s other people who have made Tom Ripon 
what he was at that moment. You must see that.” 

“But I don’t see it.” 

“It was an involuntary movement, that backing out 
of the wedding. Honestly and truthfully, Marjorie. 
It was as a sort of instinctive reflex action, the result 
of all the kicks and curses life has meted out to him. 
This getting her through his kindness and benevolence 
to the old people is far more dastardly, far more inde¬ 
fensible. It’s utterly mean, utterly contemptible. It’s 
calculated, the other wasn’t. She knew that. She’s 
wonderful the way she sees into people’s hearts.” 


The House of Broken Dreams 237 

“She doesn't see into his heart over this.” 

“Because she believes in fairy-tales; because with all 
her heart she believes that he can realize their dreams 
for them.” 

“They all want waking up,” said Marjorie. “Angus, 
I suppose you’re going to try and marry her?” 

“Yes, I’m going to try and marry her.” 

She nodded her head a little. Her eyes were very 
hard and bright. 

“I wish something would wake you up too. Bobbie 
Buttons I understand, but you!” 

“I’m going to fight Ripon.” 

“I thought you were. Of course time will prove you 
right about the old people.” 

“He’s making his running every day with letters 
telling her what arrangements he is making; and the 
old people are making his running for him with tales 
of his wonderful goodness and generosity.” 

“I suppose it makes friendship impossible, but I 
hope he wins.” 

“It does make friendship rather impossible,” he 
said quietly. “You see, this thing matters to me 
frightfully; more than I ever thought anything could 
matter in this world in the old days. I wish you under¬ 
stood.” 

“I’m sorry I can’t,” she answered crisply. 

Later her mother wandered in vaguely. 

“I went up the hill. They told me Angus was 
here.” 

“He’s gone. He asked me to say good-bye to you. 
I don’t think we shall see any more of him.” 

“Why not, Marjorie?” 


238 The House of Broken Dreams 

“He’s in love with that O’Rane girl.” 

Mrs. Moneypenny looked with passing intentness at 
her daughter’s bent golden head. 

“I thought they were rather a peculiar family?” 

‘They’re not our sort.” 

“I used to think you rather liked Angus Reid, 
dear?” 

“I used to think so myself, but I haven’t since this 
girl got hold of him.” 

“I hope she’s not objectionable in any way?” 

“She’s just . . . odd.” 

“Oh, well,” said Mrs. Moneypenny, “perhaps it’s 
just as well. You don’t know what sort of meals to 
ask those sort of people to, or what they’ll come look¬ 
ing like, or what the maids will think. It seems a 
pity. He was a nice boy.” 


v 


Kane wrote to Angus. Her letters were like her¬ 
self, vivid, impulsive, chaotic, a rush of highly-col¬ 
oured, unassorted thoughts. 

“Fannie goes about in a state of dim happiness. 
She only emerges to harden up when I try and speak 
of you. Every single day there’s a letter from that 
frog creature, Ripon. I know you can’t do anything, 
but the snag is neither can I. Fannie’s aloof as she 
always was. I can’t even guess what she’s thinking. 
She isn’t facing things, I know that. She’s sunk her¬ 
self in the happiness of the old people. She sees you 
as a brute deliberately withholding happiness from 
them. She won’t, simply won’t, let herself face the 


The House of Broken Dreams 239 

problem of their not realizing their dreams, but losing 
them permanently. Of course there are their letters, 
simply bubbling with rejoicing, and his to keep her 
going. We shan’t be back till well after Christmas, 
and then Fannie will leave me with Bobbie’s mother. 
Couldn’t I think about a trousseau in Paris ? I know 
it isn’t exactly a year; but we’ve been apart long enough 
to know that we’ll never, never want to be apart 
again.” 

He wrote and told her she could buy her trousseau 
in Paris. 

He rarely saw Robert de Bouton. He was working 
steadily, playing tennis and golf to keep fit in his free 
hours. His play was under consideration. He was 
busy on a novel. 

Angus let Kane write and tell Bobbie his decision. 
The little man rushed over to see him in frantic excite¬ 
ment. After he had finished rhapsodies, he came down 
to earth. 

“You’re looking old, Angus.” 

“I feel it.” 

“Of course,” said Bobbie sympathetically. “The 
Bolshevist swine. I met Mr. Cole in the reading-room 
of the British Museum the other day. His book comes 
out next month. It’s a damn shame, you know, Reid! 
He showed me a letter from Fannie eulogizing Tom 
Ripon.” 

“Papa Pip’s little shop is failing, Bobbie, already. 
It’s pitiful to see the old chap’s face. Ripon’s his chief 
customer, but that isn’t trade. Papa Pip can see his 
dream disintegrating before his eyes. And those other 
two dreams will explode with a bang. Oh! I hate to 


240 The House of Broken Dreams 

see it! I hate to see it! Papa Pip is creeping over 
to my side, but it’s too late! He came here alone the 
other day to ask me if it was really too late to stop 
the publication of Cole’s book and Miss Proctor s 
audition.” 

“He did!” 

“He sat there, where you are sitting, turning his 
hat round and round in his fingers and keeping on re¬ 
peating : ‘It is happier to go on believing,’ and getting 
no farther. We couldn’t be frank with each other. 
It wasn’t possible. He didn’t want to point to the death 
of his own dream. He didn’t want that brought home. 

I said: ‘Do you write to Miss Fannie?’ and he an¬ 
swered evasively: ‘Well, I haven’t had anything to 
write about lately.’ You know the look he used to 
wear . . . always as if there was something jolly 
just round the corner and he was on his way to it. 
That’s gone.” 

“What’s Ripon’s game when all the dreams are 
broken?” 

“I think he’ll go to his innocent accomplice and 
point out the necessity of salvage. He’ll tell Fannie 
the exact state of affairs; that Kane and Judy and Pat 
are dependent on me, that she owes the financing of 
the holiday she is on to me. He’ll offer to make a home 
for the old people . . . and he’ll get her.” 

“You can’t do anything?” 

“Can’t you see how utterly my hands are tied?” 

“It’s a rum situation,” said Bobbie. 

He sat smoking and blinking with his vivid whim¬ 
sical eyes. 

“Ripon is brilliant in the way he has managed to 


The House of Broken Dreams 241 

get Fannie and himself apparently together in their 
beliefs and illusions, and now in their disillusionment.” 

“I believe she likes you, but Fate and lately Tom 
Ripon have always put you in opposition to each other. 
The mater's crazy to have Kane with her in Paris. 
I won’t get married for years. Mother’s never had a 
daughter to play about with and take shopping. She’ll 
keep her for ages. Kane says the Professor thinks 
they’ll be on their way back about February. Cole told 
me Miss Proctor has been practicing seven hours a 
day. They came in the other evening and found her 
in a dead faint.” 

“It makes me absolutely see red. I think Papa Pip 
sees the game, Ripon’s game. It was rather curious 
the other evening. He more or less said that when 
Ripon had broken all their dreams he’d see that they 
were all absolutely destitute and forced to go back, 
dependent on Fannie. He doesn’t want to, he doesn’t 
want to lose his independence. He’s quietly hunting 
for a job.” 

“Game old chap.” 

“He doesn’t know the true financial state of affairs, 
of course; but he knows that Fannie can’t afford to 
keep them, and that Ripon will step forward and offer 
them a home. He’s no notion of being swept back. He 
knows they’re only pawns in the game. He’s pretty 
shrewd, shrewder than the others, I think.” 

“Somebody ought to shoot Ripon.” 

“It’s almost the only thing I can do to him which 
won’t help him with Fannie.” 

“Kane says Fannie is a delightful companion, and 


242 The House of Broken Dreams 

Mrs. Fellowes adores her, but you never get under Her 
guard. She’s got extraordinary self-control.” 

“Pat is doing wonderfully well. I went down to 
see him last week. Those things—in spite of every¬ 
thing—they make it seem worth while. Judy’s aw¬ 
fully happy, too. I think Fannie feels I’m justified 
by them ... in a sense. It’s one of the few, very 
few, cards I hold.” 

Bobbie lit his pipe. 

“By the way,” he said, “did you see Marjorie Money- 
penny’s engagement? She’s engaged to that lawyer 
fellow with bedpost knobs for ankle bones—that rather 
elderly guy who was always poking about. They’ll 
just suit each other. Both full of good teeth and horse 
sense. I’m thankful you escaped.” 

“I owe it to Fannie,” said Angus, smiling. 

“D’you ever see Ripon?” 

“Not from that day to this.” 

“But you see the old people?” 

“He doesn’t go to their shack. He makes them go 
to him; the gracious overlord touch, my boy.” 

“Swine,” said Bobbie. 

“Clever swine though,” amended Angus. 


Chapter X 


i 

ANGUS went to see Gladys Kerr many times; with 
her, in some curious, indefinable way, he found 
mental peace. 

Perhaps it was in her impersonality, an imperson¬ 
ality that had nothing actually indifferent or egotistical 
about it, but was tense with the desire to help and com¬ 
fort, but never fretted and frothed itself with useless 
conjecture or vain regret. 

It was like cool, comforting hands laid on the heat 
of his unhappiness and dismay. 

“You are so happy, Gladys,” he said to her wonder- 
ingly, many times. 

“I am so happy, Angus,” she answered, smiling 
quietly. 

She seemed to radiate her happiness, to draw her 
comfort from within. He thought, oddly, of some 
sacred pictures seen in a Catholic school, crude, sym¬ 
bolical : a heart licked with flames. The kindly, hidden 
warmth touched everyone she came in contact with 
gently and healingly, and seeing the effect she upheld 
the hidden, painful source, accepting her suffering 
almost as a vocation. 

She shared Angus’s anxiety for the old people with¬ 
out his anger for Ripon; the wings of her pitying 
243 


244 The House of Broken Dreams 

thoughts seemed to hang over them tenderly as she 
talked. He could see her pale eyes misty with pity. 

“It’s so brutal.” 

“I don’t know, Angus. There’s a sort of strength 
comes in facing things as they are. It’s like clearing 
away the undergrowth.” She paused. “They’ll be so 
much happier afterwards.” 

“Do you want to go to Miss Proctor’s audition? 
It’s next week.” 

“Are you going?” 

“Yes. I’m sending her a big gold basket of yellow 
roses to be handed up. It’s about all one can do, poor 
old lady.” 

“I’d like to sit at the back,” she said. 

“It’s awfully difficult, Gladys. If I don’t go they’ll 
say I’m unfriendly; if I do they’ll say I’ve come to 
triumph.” 

She nodded her head a little. 

“I know.” 

“Bobbie heard from Kane this morning. They 
won’t reach Paris until a month later than expected. 
Fannie won’t be home until about April as things go.” 

“You haven’t had an answer?” 

“I write regularly twice a week.” 

“Do you mention the old people?” 

“Never by any chance ” 

“What about Mr. Cole’s poems?” 

“They’re due next month. Ripon put £3,000 into 
the publisher’s hands for advertising purposes. They’ve 
been boomed. He’s paying for publication, otherwise 
they wouldn’t have been out so rapidly.” 

“They’re all so old and frail,” he said restlessly. 


The House of Broken Dreams 245 

“One wouldn’t mind if they were younger. Good 
Lord! I never thought they’d turn round like they 
did, full out for Ripon. They used to loathe him. 
Now I almost believe they’d like to see him married to 
Fannie. I’m not even sure they won’t engineer it. 
It was a most sickening, incomprehensible volte-face” 
“You can’t blame them,” she said quietly. 

“You mean they’re children?” 

“No, I mean they’re human.” 

He talked enthusiastically of Pat. The boy was 
splendid, so good at sports, so happy. His brown eyes 
shone, his oval brown face glowed. 

“Poor Fannie!” she said. 

“You mean the coming back?” 

“There won’t be any coming back, Angus.” 

“I’m not afraid.” 

“I’m quite sure Tom Ripon will tell her the finan¬ 
cial position.” 

“It can’t alter things for Judy, Kane and Pat.” 
“You’ve paid for this expensive trip of Fannie’s.” 
“I know.” 

“He’ll tell her that.” 

“I’m quite powerless to stop him or the conse¬ 
quences.” 

“I know.” 

“Do you think she’ll let me know she knows?” 

“I don’t know, Angus.” 

“What a muddle!” he said hopelessly. 

“I wish I could help you.” 

“It helps me to come here,” he answered. 

It was good to stay for a few hours in the shabby 
house that seemed to have taken on a gentle dignity, 


246 The House of Broken Dreams 

to see the emotional tenderness with which Philip 
treated his wife, the reverence. 

There was something timeless about her, the eternal 
madonna, the transparency of her, the patience, the 
gentleness, that dwelt in her tired blue eyes. 

She said to Angus: “It’s queer the peace. I don’t 
know where it comes from; I only know it for the 
peace which passeth understanding.” 

“How do you mean?” he said. 

She looked at him with her grave, considering eyes. 

“I don’t know that I could explain. I don’t know 
that I could. Since I’ve lost my outward pettinesses and 
littlenesses Philip has defied me. I am his little saint. 
Do you understand? 1 When he praises me . . . 
when he looks up to me . . . it’s like a knife in my 
heart. I think, if he knew! And the desire to tell 
him comes over me . . . like, like hell, Angus. 
Do you understand? As I fight I suffer, and that 
suffering is a sort of narcotic. I go to sleep behind 
it and find peace. Dozens of times a day I long to 
free myself by telling the truth, just for a second the 
price of Philip’s broken faith and broken life seems 
cheap. And every time I resist, the happiness that lies 
in resisting grows deeper, and I can sink further into 
it—and the further I am back in it the more strongly 
my hands and my brain and my sympathy seem to 
function for other people. Do I explain?” 

“You explain most marvellously,” he said. 

They went to Miss Proctor’s audition, and, as she 
desired, they sat far back. 

Angus was rather white, fierce. He said very little. 


The House of Broken Dreams 247 

“I hope to God she won’t wear that pale blue frock 
Kane used to talk about,” he broke out suddenly. 

The hall was damp, sooty with December fog. It 
clung to the lips and filmed the eyes like invisible spider 
webs. 

“Her name is on all of the fronts of the buses and 
in the tube lifts. Ripon must have spent hundreds 
and hundreds on advertising.” 

“It will only make people all the more furious,” 
Angus burst out. “They don’t like being taken in. 
Year after year they’re taken in over books and plays 
by advertising.” 

“We’re here to clap,” she reminded him. 

It was bitterly cold in the great hall. The audience 
had the reluctant half peevish look of people pulled 
from warm firesides. 

“There’s the brute himself,” Angus broke in vehe¬ 
mently. “Good God! Look at him smarming every¬ 
body! And I can’t do anything! That’s what bowls 
me over! I can’t do a darn thing to stop his filthy 
game. My hands are absolutely tied.” 

“There’s Papa Pip and little Mr. Cole,” she soothed 
him tranquilly. “Look, Angus, right in the front. 
Papa Pip has a bunch of malmaisons. I suppose he’s 
going to hand them up.” 

“To cover a broken dream. He knows. Oh! it’s 
piteous, and that hound ‘climbing over the bits to Fan¬ 
nie,’ as he expresses it. What’s going to be the out¬ 
come of it all, Gladys?” 

She shook her head. 

“Poor little Miss Proctor; she hasn’t the faintest 
conception of present-day technique. I mean some 


248 The House of Broken Dreams 

of the interpretations I’ve heard! Piano-playing has 
become a medium of self-expression. They’d strike 
her as indecent revelations, some of the renderings. 
Poor little soul!” 

A terrible blight seemed to have settled on the hall. 
The lights shone baldly. There was something oppres¬ 
sive in the hushed whisperings of the audience; they 
seemed to be fettered by an apathetic boredom. 
Draughts touched the neck like little cold knives. 

“They’re bus and tube people most of them,” Angus 
whispered to Gladys. “You can feel them worrying 
about the fog. They’ll never wait till the end of the 
concert. Even the weather seems working against 
her.” 

“This is the hour she’s lived for for nearly forty 
years,” Gladys said. “And it’s upon her.” 

“It’s going to be stolen from her by Ripon,” con¬ 
tradicted Angus. “If it had never come she would 
always have had it, more wonderful and beautiful with 
time, to warm herself right up to the very end. Oh! 
it’s a damnable thing he’s doing.” 

The little Punchinello butler from Fannie’s house 
slid into the last seat at the far end of their row. His 
twinkles were extinguished in a heavy melancholy, his 
merry eyes brooded gravely. As he caught sight of 
them his face cleared a little. He came round the back 
of the seats and stood beside them for a minute. 

“This is a bad day, sir,” he said. “A bad dav.” 

“I’m afraid it is.” 

“I mistrust Ripon profoundly, sir. I had reason 
to even in the old master’s day. He’s no more honour 
than a hungry cat with a salmon, sir.” 


The House of Broken Dreams 249 

“How's the house?" 

“Like a grave, sir. I doubt if this'll see the last 
of it, sir. Things are breaking up." 

“Oh, no!" 

“You can tell, sir. In all sorts of little ways you 
can tell. Miss Proctor’s met her Waterloo, you might 
say, sir, and every Waterloo drags a lot of odds and 
ends of people down, sir, who weren’t nothing to do 
with it, as you might say." 

“I'm sorry you think that," said Angus. “Have 
you heard from Miss Fannie?" 

“Pretty regular. She believes Paradise is opening 
for Miss Proctor, Papa Pip and Mr. Cole, bless her 
heart. She’s as innocent as a woman story-writer, 
sir. I used to beg the old master to let 'em go out 
in the world and find it wasn’t all they thought. No 
good. He never contemplated dying. Every father 
should contemplate dying regularly. It mayn't be 
cheery, but it’s part of his business." 

He went back to his seat and the gloom seemed 
to deepen. 

“I wish she’d come and get it over," said Angus 
restlessly. 

“There she is," said Gladys. 

There was a half-hearted clapping. It sounded like 
the impatient flutter of wings. 

Miss Proctor had had her white hair waved for 
the first time in her life. She wore a grey dress with 
long squirrel-edged, steel-studded panels. 

To all who knew her in the hall she presented the 
startling unfamiliarity that is the privilege of the 
bride or the corpse. 


250 The House of Broken Dreams 

“‘Somebody’s asked Granny to play the hymn,” said 
the man in front of them. 

“Heaven’s above!” said the woman. “That’s Emily 
Proctor!” 

“I’m going,” said the man. 

“You simply can’t! Wait a minute!” 

She adjusted the music-stool. What was actually 
a bid for poise became an intolerable affectation in 
the eyes of a disappointed audience. She fumbled 
mincingly, deliberately. 

“Good God! is she going to keep us here in cold 
storage all night?” fumed the man in front. “Silly 
old fool!” 

Miss Proctor smiled at the audience. It was a 
blind, tremulous smile of sheer ecstasy, of momentary 
abandonment to the recognition of a dream, but to her 
cold, fog-breathing audience it appeared like a little 
self-satisfied smirk. 

“Hates herself, doesn’t she?” said the man in front. 

She lifted her hands daintily, deliberately, and 
played the opening bars of Mendelssohn’s “Spring 
Song.” 

“Jesus save us!” protested the man in front, pro¬ 
fanely. 

She played evenly, correctly, the music rippled softly 
under her fingers. She played very, very well, but 
not for one minute did she get over the platform the 
shimmer of Spring sunshine or the rustle of beech trees 
in a Buckinghamshire wood. It was as if she jerked 
artificial trees with little artificial ribbons. The audi¬ 
ence received it almost as if it were an actual demon¬ 
stration and not aural suggestion. Their whole 


The House of Broken Dreams 251 

attitude betokened conscious inability to be taken in. 
It was very curious. 

Their faces seemed like bricks building solidly a 
wall of polite indifference through which her music 
trickled like the echo of a thing that is already dead. 

“One can feel it!” said Angus below his breath. 

The clapping rose light, fluttering, intolerant. It 
was like grown-ups impatiently clapping a child in 
order that it may get the thing over quickly and eagerly 
and set them free. 

“McDowell’s ‘Sea Pieces,’ ” whispered Gladys. 
“Hark at Ripon clapping. Why doesn’t he stop! Why 
doesn’t he stop! It only points the thing out.” 

“D’you think he cares?” whispered Angus fiercely. 

He looked down the row of dead faces to Fannie’s 
little butler. His head was sunk on his chest, the 
absurd curve of his absurd nose seemed to hang on it. 

The consciousness of failure spread and spread. 

Emily Proctor must know, sitting there at her piano. 

The colour and the shape faded from her dream. 

They were killing it, those fog-shrouded people out 
there; killing it with their silence that was worse than 
laughter. It seemed to spread like damp fungus to 
kill her music as it grew. It seemed to creep over her 
mind, killing it, to creep over her eyes, misting them. 

Her old throat contracted horribly, her hands grew 
like warm velvet; they seemed to clog the keys. 

She knew she had failed. 

“She knows,” whispered Angus to Gladys. 

“She could not help it,” her voice quivered; he 
saw her eyes wet with tears. 

He gripped her hand; the grip seemed to unite them 


252 The House of Broken Dreams 

in common pity, in common affection for the silly, 
pathetic old woman at the piano. 

The clapping rose like a tired sigh. It half-lived 
for a minute in the fog-laden air. 

People got up and went out, from every corner of 
the hall some rose and went out, and in their empty 
places they left the glaring admission of failure till 
the place seemed illuminated with it, reeking with it. 

“I don’t think I can stick it,” Angus whispered. 
“It’s worse than I thought.” 

“If we go it will only be two more empty places,” 
Gladys whispered. 

“The pity of it!” Angus said. “The pity of it.” 

The little butler came up to them in the interval. 

“If I couldn’t smoke now I couldn’t stick it,” he 
said. “That’s the truth. She must know what they’re 
thinking. Even I can feel it! They’re thinking she’s 
a conceited old fool. They’d like not to clap, but they’ve 
had their tickets given to them. Hopes and ambitions 
in old folks, they don’t get sympathy; they’re like 
measles and whooping-cough, they belong to youth 
and you’re not supposed to get ’em. Poor, silly, old 
dear!” he said. “Poor, silly, old dear!” 

Yet none of them could gauge the sick dismay that 
filled Emily Proctor’s heart, nor was it indicated in 
her mien. All her life she had worshipped in her simple, 
harmless vanity at the shrine of her dream, always 
she had been able to turn from real life to it. She 
had erected it so that it blocked all roads that lay 
beyond to-morrow and hid them from her sight. It 
had been a soft and secret refuge from reality. It 
had stood between her and that contemplation of the 


The House of Broken Dreams 253 

future that is so terrible for the helpless, untrained, 
unprovided-for female. Now with terrified eyes she 
saw old age across the powdered debris of her broken 
dream. Down the long road of life revealed to her, 
her sick, stumbling mind glimpsed the message of 
the pitiless, inexorable years. There was nothing in 
them, nothing but a crawling journey down an empty 
road that led nowhere. 

The only self-revelation that is merciful or even 
useful is the self-revelation that comes while we are 
yet young enough to build up a more feasible delusion. 

“Papa Pip, now Miss Proctor,” Angus murmured. 
“The sacrifice of the innocent to establish an unjust 
reign.” 

Miss Proctor rose and bowed. 

The concert was over. 

The light, the fog, the boredom had deepened. The 
seats reserved for the musical critics were empty long 
ago. Each empty seat seemed a recorded judgment. 
They rose up silently to mock the little bowing figure. 

Flowers were handed up; Papa Pip’s bunch of mal- 
maisons, Angus’s own basket of roses, a magnificent 
basket of purple orchids from Tom Ripon, a great 
sheaf of lilies-of-the-valley from Fannie. 

They added to the desolation of it all . . . the decent 
cloaking of decimation that had taken place there 
before their eyes. 

The hall cleared like magic; everybody had been 
ready and eager to go. They vanished like leaves be¬ 
fore the wind. 

“We’d better go,” Angus said. 

Outside they saw Tom Ripon help Miss Proctor into 


254 The House of Broken Dreams 

a magnificent limousine. An attendant followed with 
her floral tributes; a few passers-by stopped to stare. 

It was all unutterably pathetic. 

“It’s a hearse,” said Angus harshly. “The flowers 
accompany a dead dream.” 

They stood back in the doorway and watched Papa 
Pip and Mr. Cole follow and get into a less elaborate 
car. There was not room for all the flowers in Miss 
Proctor's car, so the lilies went in with the two old 
men. 

They wondered, watching, what absurd, pretty 
dreams she had cherished about this departure after 
the concert; people pressing forward to shake hands 
perhaps, to beg for a flower. God knows what gaudy 
decking her secret dream had had before they broke 
it for her; the busy accumulation of empty years de¬ 
void of all emotion save that which went to its joyous 
designing and to keep her heart fragrant, happy and 
blindly hoping as the heart of a child. 

They saw her face for a minute, the hopeless blind¬ 
ness of her dry eyes. 


II 

That evening Miss Proctor came to Angus in his 
rooms. 

She had changed back into her own clothes, but her 
hair still waved softly, giving her a slightly foreign 
aspect. 

Angus had just completed the purchase of farm land 
adjoining his mother's estate. He laid the deeds aside 
and looked at her curiously and kindly. 


The House of Broken Dreams 255 

“Can I do anything for you, Miss Proctor ?” he 
said. 

“I’ve been an old fool,” she answered. 

He could only wait. He waited quietly and cour¬ 
teously. 

“Can’t you save Mr. Cole and Papa Pip from find¬ 
ing themselves out?” she said. “That’s what I came 
to you about. I’ve been to Tom Ripon. He wouldn’t 
listen. He was quite frank. He explained his reasons 
for giving us our . . . our heart’s desire. He never 
explained before. He just wants Fannie. We were 
incidental. The emotional stepping-stones. Of course, 
he was right. He said: ‘You’ve had your big chance, 
and you didn’t pull it off. Whose fault is that? Not 
mine!’ Of course, he’s right. I said: ‘Do you think 
Mr. Cole’s poems have a chance?’ He said: ‘Not an 
earthly, but he’ll have his chance, like you.’ ” She 
paused. “Were you there today?” 

“Yes.” 

“Then you saw what I made of my chance.” 

“It’s all too late,” he said very quietly. 

“I was afraid it was.” She rose to her feet. She 
looked older, frailer. “I’ve been an old fool,” she said. 
“I owe you an apology. You saw clearly what would 
happen. It was just hideous vanity. One is lonely 
without it, that is the dreadful part, Angus. Already 
I miss it. I would give anything to get it back. I 
was never lonely with my old vanity, and now it is 
gone and there is a curious emptiness. I wanted to 
spare Papa Pip and little Cole that emptiness.” 

“I think Papa Pip has felt it a long time,” Angus 
said. 


256 The House of Broken Dreams 

“We’re all part of Tom Ripon’s little game and 
we’ve lent ourselves to it. We didn’t give him any 
peace until he used us. We’re not going back to be 
his pensioners. Not if we starve, we’re not going 
back.” 

“How do you mean?” 

“Didn’t you know that was part of the plan?” 

“Whose plan?” 

“Tom Ripon’s. Back to /^ sanctuary when we're 
disillusioned and penniless, and we’re nearly both. Then 
he’ll write to Fannie and tell her our condition and 
offer to keep us all in the house of dreams if she’ll 
marry him, and Fannie will marry him in one of her 
impulsive waves of pity and love for us. I know. 
I know how he’ll write it and how she will read it 
It’s all part of a scheme, but I’m not going back. I’m 
not going back.” 

“I see,” he said. 

“Can’t you stop his succeeding?” 

“You know I can’t,” he paused. “Besides, he has 
even stronger cards to play than the ones you know of.” 

She clenched her hands. 

“We must all stand together, Papa Pip, Mr. Cole 
and I. All for one and one for all. We’ve 
been together so many years. It’s more terrible 
to lose your self-respect when you’re old than when 
you are young. We mustn’t lose the last remnant of 
ours. It’s worth fighting for. I am going to find 
music pupils.” 

“I think it would be the best possible thing you 
could do. Will you let me put some advertisement in 
for you?” 


The House of Broken Dreams 257 

She looked at him. Her eyes filled with the slow, 
difficult tears of old age. 

“I’ve worked against you all the months Fannie 
has been abroad with Professor and Mrs. Fellowes,” 
she said. “I hated you because of your common sense. 
All my letters have been eulogies of Ripon I want you 
to know before you do anything for me.” 

“It doesn’t make any difference,” he said, smiling. 
“Besides, I know.” 

They looked at each other. She clasped and un¬ 
clasped her hands. 

“What will happen? What will happen? Can’t you 
go out and see her?” 

“And take a tale of your failure to prove myself 
right? Would it be wise? What other tale could I 
tell? I’ve written twice a week ever since she went.” 

“And had no answer?” 

“And had no answer. I do not even know whether 
she destroys my letters or reads them.” 

“But you’re not going to let Tom Ripon have her?” 

“Not if I can help it, but I don’t know that I can. 
To storm the fort would be to achieve permanent 
defeat. It is only in stories love is won by force; in 
real life it is gained by common sense. Do you think 
it is easy waiting for the other man to move first?” 
A wave of red travelled swiftly up to the very roots 
of his hair, his brown eyes shone angrily. “Every 
single thing that a normal man’s (normal interests 
would lead him to do are fatal in this case, that’s 
what’s so odd about it. I ache to go and knock Ripon 
down, and if I did I’d knock him straight into Fannie’s 
ignorant, compassionate arms; both he and I know 


258 The House of Broken Dreams 

that. He’s tried to egg me on to do it. Your success 
would have aided me better than your failure. Even 
you are tied; you can’t write and abuse Tom Ripon 
to Fannie now. Not now you’ve failed. She’ll only 
say it’s personal disappointment and ungenerous, and 
it will incline her heart to him all the more. You can’t 
turn on him now or you bind her sympathies the 
closer. Oh! it’s a horrible position. He’s got us all 
trussed up . . . harmless!” 

She nodded her old head sadly. 

“I’m sorry, boy. It was all self-interest. It made 
me blind. It made us all blind.” 

“It wasn’t your fault, Miss Proctor. You saw the 
chance of a dream of a lifetime being realized. You 
wouldn’t have been human if you had done otherwise.” 

“If I can ever help you,” she said. “If I can ever 
help you, you know I will.” 

He took her cold, dry little hand and held it in his 
two strong, young, warm ones. 

“I am sure you will, he said genially, gently. “I’m 
sure you will.” 


hi 

After the audition Tom Ripon dropped all pretence 
of interest in the three old people. He neither sought 
them nor sent for them. His name, which had filled 
their letters to Fannie, dropped out of them. Yet 
they dare not write adversely of him, lest her quick 
sympathy and sense of fair play should catch fire for 
him after their recent eulogies. Ripon guessed this 
and allowed himself no fruitless fear of them. Into his 


The House of Broken Dreams 259 

own letters to Fannie he allowed to creep a very faint, 
hurt disappointment, barely insinuating that they re¬ 
sented their failure and vented it on him; their own 
letters bore this impression out, and Fannie’s replies 
to Tom were kinder and more gentle in consequence; 
more and more he implied that the offset against such 
base ingratitude was only found in her own gratitude 
and more and more she found herself impelled to 
express it; until she took the attempted realization of 
her pensioners’ dreams as a personal gift, which was 
what he aimed at. With it grew an accompanying 
sense of obligation which he fostered and added to 
with cunningly wrought phrases, creating a curiously 
artificial but intimate web of atmosphere between her¬ 
self and him. 

He never made any further inquiries about Papa 
Pip’s tiny business as the months slipped by; in this 
he worked in accordance with a deliberate plan. The 
paint grew dirty, and the short tenancy worked itself 
out and Papa Pip did not renew it. One morning the 
shutters were up, and the next morning men were 
painting it violet and silver, and writing “Violet” 
across the tiny shop front, that blouses of a less shy 
and retiring character might bloom flamboyantly be¬ 
neath. It was all part of a preconceived scheme of 
Ripon’s, but Papa Pip grievously upset it by finding 
a job as an assistant keeper in some little public gar¬ 
dens near by. The wages were small, but the old man 
was supremely happy; the worry faded from his blue 
eyes and the smile came back to them. He knew where 
every bulb was planted under the frost-bound earth; 
he soon knew the name of every child who came there 


260 The House of Broken Dreams 

to play; he shared his lunch with the birds until they 
came to know him and look for him. It was his world 
and he was king. He had kinship with it all. 

Little Mr. Cole’s book of poems was issued. Some 
of the critics were angry and some sarcastic, and 
some dismissed him in two lines. The book, for all 
the money lavished upon it before publication, had 
the same fate as any other small, expensive book of 
indifferent verse. The great noise he had thought 
to see them make in the world never came. The pub¬ 
lisher, who had received him with flattery and fair 
promise before the book was issued, because of Tom 
Ripon’s cheques, ceased to be in when he called. 

It took him weeks to realize, and the realization came, 
grey and old and broken, shuffling from behind a door 
in his imagination, behind which had always dwelt 
golden glory, high fame and signal honour. It took 
him time to realize that behind that door was eternal 
emptiness, and that this broken, shuffling grey thing 
that was knowledge of the truth would companion 
him for evermore. 

They were so utterly tender, so wonderful to him, 
those other two, during those days; and their sympathy 
was silent and yet lived and helped them more than 
it helped him; so that they drew right away from their 
own self-pity and wounded pride and were filled in¬ 
stead with the steadying, levelling consciousness of 
being part of a community and not separate, suffering, 
injured entities. 

Never, curiously enough, had they been so free men¬ 
tally or owned so spacious an horizon; always it had 


The House of Broken Dreams 261 

been bounded by the fretful dapple of their unrealized 
dream. 

They lived very frugally, they went without much 
to which they had been accustomed in the old days, 
and yet it had an unbelievable and amazing peace and 
actual happiness. Their independence upheld their cour¬ 
age proudly. It came back almost like miraculously 
renewed youth. 

Every week Papa Pip brought home his meagre 
salary, and Miss Proctor took it into the markets of 
Soho and bartered with it cunningly and carefully. 
She had found a pupil. Three lessons a week at three 
shillings each. She was filled with that invaluable con¬ 
sciousness of really being necessary to someone. She 
used her imagination, her rusted housewifely training, 
to obtain the very utmost value for the little money 
they had. 

And little Mr. Cole prowled miserably in and out 
the house, departing in little enthusiastic searches for 
work and returning always somehow older and more 
depressed. His small face grew white and wizened like 
the face of a sick child. Then one day he returned 
jubilant. The woman who answered the personal col¬ 
umn on Mother's Merry Moments was ill. He had 
been engaged to answer letters at sixpence each under 
the nom de plume of “Aunt Martha.” 

It is impossible for anyone who has never known 
the inside of an editorial staff to realize the extraor¬ 
dinary intimacy and variety of the letters that arrive 
addressed to the friend that lurks beneath a borrowed 
name or lives idealized at the head of a column in a 
thumb-nail sketch. It afforded a marvellous panacea 


262 


The House of Broken Dreams 


for Mr. Cole’s wounded vanity and swollen egotism, 
these appeals that came from every quarter of Eng¬ 
land, to misspelt, wistful outstretchings of loneliness 
to friendship, the veil lifted suddenly from clean, drab 
lives in cottage and villa. There came to him a dim, 
humble wonder which he expressed over and over 
again. 

“How do they stick it? How do they stick it?” 

Sometimes a problem too feminine baffled him and 
he would take counsel with his two old friends, read 
them bits of letters from “Maisie” and “Violetta” or 
“Wind over the Moor.” 

They would sit over the fire, with the bare gas jet 
flaring away, and listen and advise and wonder at 
the largeness and the sadness and the quiet endurance 
of the world, and the impersonality that they brought 
to bear on the problem would creep over themselves 
and they would rest awhile in it. 

“So many people all doing different things and 
wanting different things,” Miss Proctor would marvel. 

Sometimes she cried over the letters; so pitifully 
many were from girls who faced the possibility of 
an unwanted baby, frantic, frightened letters. She 
could not bear to look at these, the hasty writing 
always seemed to her to run together in little gasps 
and explosions of terror. Mr. Cole had his instructions 
from the editor about these: “Always tell them that 
their mother is their best friend.” “But surely I can 
say more than that.” “Yes,” said the editor, “we 
usually begin in those cases: ‘My poor, unhappy, little 
girls.* ” 

Two days a week he spent at the office bottling real 


The House of Broken Dreams 263 

Jordan water from a cask in the assistant editor’s 
room for christening babies. They charged two shillings 
a bottle, and some mothers wrote to say that the baby 
slept through the ceremony and none of the others 
had. Eventually they discovered some frogs living at 
the bottom of the cask, so it was banished and they 
drew their Jordan water from the tap. It was much 
more hygienic, and the mothers still wrote to say how 
well their babies slept. 

It worried gentle Mr. Cole a little. He remarked 
timidly to the editor, a crisp young man trained in 
modern methods, that it seemed rather a shame, a little 
fraudulent perhaps. “As long as people believe they’re 
getting what they’re paying for it isn’t fraud,” said 
the editor. When the woman who had answered the 
personal column of Mother's Merry Moments died, 
they asked Mr. Cole to retain the job permanently. 
“You’re a simple person,” explained the young editor; 
“you believe that black is black and white is white.” 
“Well, isn’t it?” “Hardly ever,” grinned the editor. 

Sometimes he made as much as thirty shillings a 
week out of his bottling and his answers to corre¬ 
spondents, for to both tasks he brought both sympathy 
and singleness of purpose. One day the assistant edi¬ 
tor, watching him at his work, said, curiously: “Are 
you making up poetry, Cole?” The gentle little man 
smiled. “In a way. I sort of wish for every baby a 
sort of prayer.” The assistant editor sighed. “By 
Jove!” he said, “if you were only the Bishop of Lon¬ 
don, what an ‘ad’ you’d make.” 

So the days slipped by; snowdrops Papa Pip had 
planted in the biscuit-box danced like slim pierrettes 


264 The House of Broken Dreams 

on the window-sill, the crocuses in the park showed 
little spikes of violet and yellow, the sharp pale nose 
of the daffodil broke the earth; then one day when 
the first mimosa was on sale in the London streets 
and they sat at their work; Miss Proctor beside the fire 
darning one of Papa Pip's socks, Papa Pip poring over 
a Dutch bulb catalogue he had found in the waste- 
paper box in the park, and Mr. Cole at the table under 
the gas jet deciding laboriously whether it would be 
wiser for Anxious Mother “to trim her cot with blue 
because she really wanted a boy, or pink in case she 
didn't get a boy, and her friends, particularly her 
sister-in-law, who had red hair and three girls, should 
laugh.” The door opened and Tom Ripon stood there. 

He was in evening dress; against the background 
of the dark, unlighted passage, his black and whiteness 
looked like an advertisement. 

He gave a little bow and grinned at them. 

“Good evening, merry gentlemen,” he said; “may 
nothing you dismay.” 

He came, he shook hands, smiling, with them all. 
Miss Proctor said after: “It would be absurd to say I 
behaved like a poker; I was just not effusive.” 

That was it. They were none of them effusive, 
they were not even natural. He had made them some¬ 
how not only miserably self-conscious of him, but of 
themselves. They avoided each other's eyes. 

“Won’t you smoke?” he said to Papa Pip. 

“Thank you,” said Papa Pip; “it's not my day 
for smoking.” 

“Not your day! By Jove! I never remember you 
without something in your mouth.” 


The House of Broken Dreams 265 

“I know/’ said Papa Pip. 

Tom Ripon glanced at him sharply. The old fellow 
appeared to have pulled himself together; the vague 
amiability that had always characterized him was 
replaced by something he could not quite define, but 
felt to be a menace to his plans. The old Papa Pip 
would have been as incapable of refusing a smoke as 
a child a candy. He looked hastily, searchingly round 
the room, and, as its utter poverty penetrated into his 
imagination, the disquiet vanished from his expression; 
he became once more bland, suave, assured. 

“I should have come before,” he said. 

“Won’t you sit down now you’re here?” said Miss 
Proctor a little sharply. 

He sat down on the hard Windsor chair and looked 
at the fire balls that eked out the coal in the grate. 
They seemed to convey to him that last bit of reas¬ 
surance he required. He said suddenly, throwing the 
remark at them: 

“You must be about sick of this at your age.” 

“Oh! I don’t know,” temporized little Mr. Cole. 

“Well,” said Tom Ripon, “Fannie wants you back.” 

There was dead silence. Miss Proctor’s mending 
dropped from her fingers, Mr. Cole laid down his 
pen. Papa Pip drew a long, slow, hissing breath. The 
constraint that Tom Ripon’s advent had wrought be¬ 
tween them vanished, without moving they had sud¬ 
denly become allied against him, where there had been 
units there suddenly existed complete unity. He must 
have sensed this in the silence that followed. His 
bright eyes flickered round their faces, his hands lost 


266 The House of Broken Dreams 

their unaccustomed immobility, and once more spoke 
flutteringly, impatiently in time with his words. 

“Well? Well? Well? ,, 

“Did she send you?” faltered Papa Pip. 

“In a sense, yes.” 

“What sense?” demanded Miss Proctor. 

“Good God! she’d have a fit if she saw you living 
in this hovel in this cut-throat neighbourhood.” 

“It is clean and they are decent people,” said Miss 
Proctor. “And the markets near make the living very 
cheap.” 

“Did she send you ?” echoed Mr. Cole. 

Tom Ripon looked round the room then, saw clean 
scrubbed boards and clean scrubbed table, odd chairs 
glowing from polishing; cheap cretonne curtains at 
the windows; Papa Pip’s snowdrops dancing on the 
window-sill with a white crinkled paper frill round 
them; some presage of what was to come assailed 
him. The place, bare and poor as it was, had that 
indefinable, unmistakable atmosphere of home. It was 
a monument of effort, of self-discipline, of unselfish¬ 
ness. 

“Do you suppose when Fannie O’Rane comes back 
to London she could bear the thought of your being 
here without even enough to eat ?” he said. 

“How do you know we haven’t enough to eat?” 
demanded Papa Pip truculently. “We’re all working; 
we’ve all got a job.” 

He laughed. His quick squirrel eyes went ferreting 
from one quiet old face to the other. Then sudden 
anger shook him. 


The House of Broken Dreams 267 

“Hell!” he exploded. “How long d’you think you’ll 
keep your old jobs!” 

He saw his slip then, and his anger turned on him¬ 
self; he had mismeasured their new-found maturity. 
He saw it suddenly as a definite menace to his own 
matured plans. He left them so long without succour 
that they had been forced to succour themselves. He 
cursed himself for a fool for underestimating their 
powers and their pluck. They were pawns in a care¬ 
fully thought-out game. He began to manoeuvre them, 
but using an intelligence he had never anticipated the 
need of. 

“Do you think she could live on in the house of 
dreams . . . ?” 

“Broken dreams,” interrupted Miss Proctor gently. 
She was looking at him intently, seeingly. It gave 
him an odd distasteful feeling, as if he were a very 
vain old man caught suddenly in a big mirror and 
early morning sunlight. 

“Fannie would go mad at the idea of your living 
here as you are doing.” 

“Not these days she wouldn’t,” said Papa Pip. 
“She’s got out of the old rut like the rest of us. You’ve 
come to the wrong people, Ripon, the wrong people. 
Get Fannie if you can, but not through us. We’re 
going to stay here and live our own lives.” 

“And I hope you don’t get her,” said little Mr. Cole 
unexpectedly. “And I don’t believe you will.” 

He stared at them, suddenly thin-lipped, nostrils 
a little distended; he was bloodless with a sort of 
driving anger and spite. 

“You old fools,” he said, “whether you fit in or 


268 The House of Broken Dreams 

not Ill use you to get her.” He clenched his hands 
together. ‘‘I’ve been working, working in my letters, 
and I've laid well and truly, and you’ve helped me 
without knowing it, each of you, you’ve pleaded my 
cause for me. D’you think you’re going to spoil it all 
in the end? Not much!” 

“Tom Ripon,” said little Mr. Cole quite unexpect¬ 
edly, “we owe you a very great debt. You are the 
St. George who has freed us from the dragon. Hail, 
St. George!” He gave him a little ironical bow. 

“You broke our dreams,” added Miss Proctor. 
“That’s what he means. Don’t you understand? Of 
course, we know why you did it, don’t imagine we 
don’t know; but we’ve been so much, much happier 
since, free in a way you could never understand. You 
emptied the road for us. It wasn’t easy at first, but 
every day it’s grown easier. We wouldn’t go back 
for anything. We don’t want to know that to-morrow 
is like yesterday. You’ve been awfully clever, but I 
don’t think you’ll get Fannie O’Rane for all your 
cleverness, because you’re up against something you 
don’t understand, and you can’t possibly reckon with 
what you don’t understand.” 

It was odd to watch Ripon. There was something 
coming through the veneer that they had never seen 
before, but had always known was there and curiously 
enough always expected. It struggled through his ac¬ 
quired manners and mannerisms like a naturally wild 
beast out of gilt and ribbon trappings foreign to it. 
It was for him they felt dismay at the revelation. 
They felt that they had always known the other side 
of him there, but he had not known they knew. Now 


The House of Broken Dreams 269 

he must know; their manner could only register rec¬ 
ognition and not amazement. 

“You came to ask us to go back to the house of 
broken dreams,” Mr. Cole said gently. “We couldn’t 
go back, Ripon. It isn’t any good. Old age leaves us 
with such few possessions, and self-respect is the 
greatest and dearest of these. For years and years 
while we lived on Mr. O’Rane’s bounty we lost it. 
Now we have got it back, and we’re going to keep it 
till we die. It isn’t any good, my boy; it isn’t any 
good.” 

“We’re happy here, Tom,” said Miss Proctor gently, 
“happier than we’ve ever been, and we are disillu¬ 
sioned. You are too young to know the peace there 
is in that. It isn’t a thing to be afraid of. It is a thing 
to be glad about. It clears your way. It sets you 
free.” 

“We’re happy,” said Papa Pip. 

They looked at him with that new, tranquil, clear¬ 
eyed impersonality, and he hurled himself against it 
angrily, as if it were a barrier and he could break his 
way through with a splutter of words. 

“I’ve had my scheme from the first. D’you think 
I’m going to have it broken up by three old fools with 
one foot in the grave . . . like flappers with a latchkey, 
aren’t you? Like the taste of it!” He paused and 
glared at them furiously, then he rose to his feet and 
paced up and down the bare floor like a caged thing. 
It was the oddest thing to see him in his immaculate 
evening clothes, that were too immaculate, pacing up 
and down the bare floor and the little quick, hard 
rhythmic taps his pumps made. He was quite white 


270 The House of Broken Dreams 

now, the milky white of the reddish-haired man. The 
three old people sat and watched him. Their eyes if 
anything were pitying, Papa Pip and Miss Proctor 
beside the fire and little Mr. Cole still at his table with 
the letter to “Anxious Mother” still unanswered. 

“You’re not the man for Fannie,” Miss Proctor 
called out suddenly as if she saw a vision. “Even 
though you get her, you’re not the man for Fannie 
O’Rane. Oh! I can’t tell you how, but I know it, I 
know it!” 

“I know it, too!” he said. 

He stood there before them, his head a little bent, 
his bright eyes raking their unhappy faces. He gnawed 
one of his nails in an ugly, uncouth way. They had 
never seen him do it, his nails showed no evidence of 
the old trick, they were too smooth, too polished if 
anything, and yet they knew quite well that he would 
look like that doing it. It was one of the temper out¬ 
lets of which they would have suspected him if they 
had analysed their old subsconscious impressions. 

“I know it,” he said. “I’m going to be the man 
for her after we’re married . . . I’m going to learn. 
I can learn anything! You know I can learn anything. 
All I am I’ve learnt to be. I want her! You old fossils 
. . . dry-bones who’ve forgotten . . . you don’t know 
what that means! I want her! D’you hear that? D’you 
take that in? Everything I’ve wanted I’ve had! I’ve 
taken it! Don’t sit there staring at me like three mum¬ 
mies.” 

“This serves no purpose,” said little Mr. Cole. 
“This serves no purpose, and you won’t like to remem¬ 
ber it after, Ripon.” 


The House of Broken Dreams 271 

But Ripon wanted an audience on which to work 
himself up, his fiercely worked-up rhetoric, his theatri- 
calism served, as it had a thousand times before, to 
cremate his own self-doubts. It was the only means by 
which he could jettison them. 

“I hoped to find you destitute and starving,” he 
said violently. ‘That’s God’s truth. I should have 
watched you closer. I gave you too long. I thought 
you were all too old. I meant to go to Fannie ... an 
emissary from you, with the tale of your woes and 
the promise of your salvation if she married me. 
There’s no salvation unless she marries me. I’m going 
to tell her something she doesn’t know, something 
that I’ve known a long, long time, something that I 
kept close until I wanted it . . . that Angus Reid had 
paid for her trip with Kane, and Kane’s trip and 
trousseau and the education of the others. Oh! you’re 
staring, aren’t you?” 

“I guessed,” said Papa Pip. “I guessed.” 

“Oh! you did, did you? Well, I’m still going to 
tell her . . . but I’ve got a new tale. My letters aind 
your letters have paved the way for this as well as 
the others. I’m going to tell her that you won’t go 
back to the house of broken dreams . . . because I broke 
them. I’m going to her not as a saviour, but as a 
pitiful penitent. You hate me because I tried to realize 
your dreams for you, and now your pride and your 
hatred of me stand in the way of your comfort and 
safe old age. I shall describe this room to her in detail. 
I have lived in such rooms. I have seen terrible trage¬ 
dies in such rooms. They are graven on my memory. 
I shall picture it for her.” 


272 The House of Broken Dreams 

“We have no hatred of you!” Papa Pip cried. 
“That’s not the reason, and you know it!” 

“Of course, I know it, but that is the tale I shall 
carry . . . arriving unexpectedly in a strange land, a 
friend from home. Listen! I haven’t finished. I know 
my Fannie! I shall offer to sacrifice myself for you. 
I shall tell her of my love for her . . . that everything, 
my whole happiness lies in that . . . and then I shall 
offer to go right away, to make over enough money 
to open the house of dreams again and have you all 
back. I’ll do more than that. I’ll offer never to return 
to England again, to remain an exile in a strange land. 
An exile for love! D’you hear? D’you understand? 
D’you think she’ll let me do it? Every letter you’ve 
written has unconsciously prepared the way, my amia¬ 
ble old fools. Didn’t you rave about me . . . and then, 
when all my efforts couldn’t realize your dreams for 
you, didn’t you drop me out of your letters as if you 
fairly hated me? Haven’t you treated me damnably 
in Fannie’s eyes? I’m perfectly frank with you be¬ 
cause I’ve nothing to fear now ... or ever. Anything 
you say against me will only illustrate your own vil¬ 
lainous want of generosity and pique. If you work 
against me you work for me.” 

“If you take her you’ll take her by trick, because 
she’s an emotional Irish girl,” Mr. Cole cried sharply. 

“D’you think I care how I get her so long as I get 
her!” 

“No!” exploded Papa Pip violently. “I don’t. I’ll 
go across to Paris. I’ll see her myself. I’ll . . .” 

“D’you think they’ll carry you to Paris for love?” 
said Tom Ripon, passionately. “Oh! I’m not setting 


The House of Broken Dreams 273 

out to be a fine character. I don't care a damn what 
you think of me. Reid, too—he’s worked for me 
without knowing it, getting them all away from Fan¬ 
nie and then humiliating her without consulting her 
by putting her under an obligation to him. I offer 
her a way out of that, too. If she marries me she 
can pay him back. I’m the only person left in her life 
that needs her. All you others, all of you, you’ve cast 
her off. Don’t you forget that. You’ve made her into 
a woman at a loose end, without a vocation or a future. 
Don’t forget that. I go to her broken and disillu¬ 
sioned ... by you three! amazed at your ingratitude! 
Do you see the picture? I offer to relinquish her love 
in order to make your remaining days peaceful, since 
you will not take even a crust of bread from me when 
I am there. Oh! but I shall put it very, very much 
better than this to Fannie because I shall be inspired 
and fighting, and I love to fight with words. I can¬ 
not fight any other way, I am afraid. The very stars 
work for me. There is Kane and the atmosphere of the 
trousseau; Kane who has found anchorage and Fannie 
who has found none. I don’t think there is any doubt 
of the issue, unless a few months of travel have altered 
her more than I think possible. It is not the first time 
she has been abroad, but it is the first time I have 
been abroad and I do not speak the language. Fannie 
will have to take me under her protection. She is used 
to that. I think we shall come back engaged, and if we 
do we shall very soon be married. You won’t be able 
to say much, because I shall have prepared her for the 
very things you are likely to say and she will expect 
them. I defy anyone to trump this hand.” 


274 The House of Broken Dreams 

He struck an absurd attitude and looked round at 
them; and he seemed to them not so much absurd as 
ugly, ugly with an ugliness that insulted their own 
refinement and good feeling because it must always 
have been there and they had not chosen to acknowl¬ 
edge it. 

“If you really love her,” faltered Miss Proctor 
bleakly. Her voice died away because she realized 
that he was nothing like the lovers an old spinster 
knows, the lovers who live in books. 

The gas suddenly dimmed. It had been growing 
dimmer a long time, but they had not noticed. 

“A man who behaves like a swine . . .” began little 
Mr. Cole. 

He could not go on because he suddenly saw him¬ 
self mirrored in the other’s fantastic mind, a little 
windbag of a fellow playing with independence like 
a child with a new toy. 

The gas went out. 

“For all your damned heroics I bet none of you 
have got a shilling for the meter!” Tim Ripon said 
curtly. “There’s one. It’s the last you’ll get from me.” 

He flung one on the table. They heard it roll and 
strike the floor, roll and spin a little. 

When he had gone they sat very quiet in the dark¬ 
ness. Then Papa Pip spoke: 

“You mustn’t cry, Emily, my dear,” he said gently. 

The name fell on her troubled consciousness like a 
little caress stilling it. It seemed to herald and inaugu¬ 
rate a new feature in the relationship, a definite deep¬ 
ening of the kindness and understanding and sympathy 
that had grown between them. 


The House of Broken Dreams 275 

“Someone must go and tell Angus Reid. Tom has 
gone to Fannie!” she said. “There isn’t any time to 
lose. I don’t know that he can do anything, hut he 
ought to know. He ought to be prepared.” 

“Who is to go?” said little Mr. Cole. 

“You’d better go. And borrow a shilling from him 
for the gas. We’ll be sitting here in the darkness 
thinking. I can’t stand it all the evening.” 

It did not occur to any of them to use Tom Ripon’s 
money. 


IV 

It seemed hours after that they heard little Mr. Cole 
darting rapidly upstairs. 

They had sat almost in silence awaiting his return. 

The moon was risen now; it lay in white mats on the 
bare floor. 

“He wasn’t in,” said Mr. Cole in the doorway. 

Papa Pip’s fingers beat a nervous tattoo on the table. 

“Surely, surely you should have waited, Cole.” 

“He’s gone away for a day or two and they don’t 
know where he is. It wasn’t any good waiting.” 

Miss Proctor’s voice said suddenly in the darkness: 

“Oh! I’m frightened! I’m frightened for Fannie!” 


Chapter XI 


i 

O UTSIDE the hotel windows churned the life of 
Paris; the spume of laughter, the light battering 
of parrot voices was thrown against their window 
as they talked. 

Fannie O’Rane sat crumpled in a gilt chair; the 
room was all gilt, Empire period, ormolu and rose du 
Barry brocade, like the drawing-room scene in a tour¬ 
ing comedy. 

She had been crying; the handkerchief in her hand 
was sodden. Her eyes were more surprised than sad, 
as if tears had been shaken from her to her own aston¬ 
ishment and considerable annoyance. 

Just as persistently as the innate histrionism of Tom 
Ripon gathered the subtle, garnish insincerity of the 
setting round him, Fannie smoothed it out and ren¬ 
dered it futile as a setting for the atmosphere he sought 
to achieve, and yet as the hours slipped by he gained 
ascendancy over her; the starkness of his frankness, 
the complete discovery of his aims began to make little 
darting inroads into her emotions; the room seemed 
to grow oppressively small, boxing them in together 
in a mental intimacy that was more distressing than 
physical intimacy; the ruthlessness of his own honesty 
dragged at hers. His barriers were down. Hers were 
276 


The House of Broken Dreams 277 

still up, and the very consciousness of holding them 
against him woke her to passionate, surprised, excited 
recognition of the things that barrier protected. 

As he discovered himself to her, so he discovered 
herself to her; that was the astounding part of it. Bit 
by bit he dragged her out of the twilight of her own 
mind into the daylight; so that he had her at last stark 
in her own sight and still mysteriously veiled to his. 

There, under his vivid showmanship, she passed 
from girlhood to womanhood, and crying aloud his 
own miracle he saw not hers. As he hammered into 
her plastic mind understanding of himself she came 
to self-revelation, darted to it, blind to him and thrill¬ 
ing to herself and all she found there. 

Passionately she longed to get away from him un¬ 
discovered and turn it over—and yet his mind was 
bearing down on hers, she knew that; it was circling 
round her and the circles were becoming smaller and 
smaller. 

“I wanted you,” he said. “There you have it. Shut 
up with you in the house I wanted you, my lady, and 
you must have known it.” 

“I know it now,” she said; “I did not know it then.” 

Her beautiful eyes were wide on him, yet he could 
not see they did not reflect him but the things he re¬ 
vealed to her. 

“I am going to have you,” he said. “One way or 
another, I am going to have you. All my life I have 
had what I want. We’ll make a home for the old 
people, you shall pay Reid back what you owe him, 
but all those things are incidental; the result of your 
coming to me. Even in the old days, Fannie, when 


278 The House of Broken Dreams 

your father was alive, I must have wanted you and not 
known it . . . It's funny that knowledge should come 
now, like stumbling on the acorn that grew the tree.” 

She said: 

“Angus was right. They won’t want to come back.” 

“They’ll have no alternative. What does it matter 
what they want ?” 

“It’s the only thing that does matter. Angus saw 
that.” She paused. “You haven’t any right to make 
people do what’s good and wise for them. It’s like 
imprisoning them, and that’s what I’ve done all my 
life.” 

“But you don’t want to be under an obligation to 
Reid? Good Lord! I’ve made the position clear.” 

“Over and over again, Tom,” she assured him. 
“Over and over again.” 

He came closer to her secret then, but like a blind, 
angry animal lashing round in the dark. 

“What the hell’s at the back of your mind, Fannie?” 
he said. 

She could have cried it aloud in one word and seen 
her whole mind lit up in answer. 

“I shall sell the house of dreams and all the furni¬ 
ture,” she said steadily. “After you are gone, I shall 
write to the auctioneers to-night. I shall pay Angus 
back what I owe him personally. Then I shall be 
free.” 

“And then?” he queried in a thick voice. 

“Then I shall go and live with Papa Pip, Miss 
Proctor and Mr. Cole and find work.” 

He stared at her. 

“You won’t,” he said. “You’ll marry me.” 


The House of Broken Dreams 279 

She shook her head. 

“I couldn’t, Tom,” she said. “Not ever.” 

He heard that. It rang in his brain, in his ears like 
a clear bell. It travelled to his nerves and jarred them 
like a sting, it bit along his imagination, and the veneer 
and pose that time had given cracked and became a 
shapeless, thin thing under which his temper squirmed 
and fretted. 

“So that’s it!” he spat at her. 

“Angus,” she said, and looked at him straight and 
level. “If I had known I would have told you before. 
I didn’t know, Tom, I only suspected . . . and I 
wouldn’t look.” 

“Love, you mean ?” he said. 

“Love, I mean,” she answered. 

The very simplicity, the honesty of her inflamed 
him as if it were the flaunting of infidelity. He could 
have struck her across her white face and visioning 
eyes. He would have struck her if she hadn’t turned 
away. 

“Please, please understand,” she said. “I didn’t 
know. Angus must have been there right from the 
beginning with me ... as you say I was with you; 
and I never understood at all. I wouldn’t look.” 

He went to the window, pulled the blind aside and 
looked out. Strips of shadow and light going past his 
eyes like a striped paper before the eyes of a running 
drunkard. 

“I wouldn’t look,” she repeated. 

He laughed, and the whirling world stood still as if 
pinned for a minute by his laugh, and in that minute 
he turned and caught her in his arms and kissed her, a 


280 The House of Broken Dreams 

kiss that set the world whirling again, only this time 
it was gold and red, red and gold, and it seemed to 
catch up his brain and twist it, heating it as if its red 
and goldenness were the glow of a fire. 

She neither protested nor cried out. Of all that he 
expected of her, that his experience of women had led 
him to expect, nothing was there. There was neither 
anger, nor that outraged dignity that cradles still a 
spark of provocation, nor yet one gleam of that sub¬ 
conscious gratification that he had often evoked. 

It was as if he had sought to spend his passion on 
a warm hand so violently that he had not noticed the 
substitution of a glove, and yet he knew she under¬ 
stood the feverishness he had not transmitted because 
the hand he had not touched had indeed once been 
really kissed. 

“It didn’t reach,” she said: “Tom, try and under¬ 
stand as I am trying to tell you . . . nothing could 
reach except Angus. He got in and closed 
the gates after him, and I found him there. Even 
... if when I get back to London he doesn’t want 
me he will always be there and I shall always want him. 
Please understand. There hasn’t been another man in 
my life. That doesn’t matter. What does matter is 
that there couldn’t be another ever. I didn’t think one 
could ever know that, but one does. Please under¬ 
stand. He was my enemy and is now my lover, al¬ 
though he has never been either really. Please under¬ 
stand. It’s all so useless, everything else.” 

He kissed her again. He was ugly with passion. 
His face was hot, but his brain was hot too. It was 
that she felt and that affronted her. 


The House of Broken Dreams 281 

“You feel that / 9 he said thickly. “You feel that 1 ” 

“I don’t,” she said passionately. “That’s what 
makes it such an insult.” 

He cursed. He cursed. He seemed to delight in 
dragging all that he had kept submerged in his 
acquaintance with her to the surface. She was wide- 
eyed before the exhibition, but very calm. 

“Isn’t all this a pity,” she said. “Let’s stop, Tom.” 

She was quite unassailable. It was as if he were a 
madman contesting sovereignty. Her very manner 
refuted him. 

“I tell you what I am going to do,” she said. “I 
am going to sell the house of dreams, the furniture 
and everything, and I am going to work. Kane will 
marry Bobbie. Judy will be a nurse. Pat will have 
a career. They’ll follow their own roads. Angus gave 
them their freedom. I’ve only just seen it was their 
right; there should never have been the necessity to 
have had it secured for them.” 

“You talk like a damn schoolgirl!” he flung at her. 

“Please go!” she said, “Please go!” She half rose. 

“I’ll stay here till I make you understand you’re 
going to marry me.” 

“But I love Angus Reid.” 

He flung that on one side. “I know that. 1 want 
you. I don’t want the things you’d give Angus Reid. 
I’ve had them time and again. I want the things that 
you and no other woman could give me! You’re to 
furnish my life where it’s ugly and empty and incom¬ 
plete, where I can’t even reach it.” 

“But I can’t! I can’t!” 

“You shall!” he said. 


282 The House of Broken Dreams 

He was in a bath of perspiration. His face was 
sweaty, greasy with it. It seemed in some dim way 
to wake her mind to pictures of his beginnings, his 
struggles up from degradation and ugliness, and for 
the very first time she saw that beginning as the roots 
of him. Hitherto she had seen it as something he had 
cast off. She shivered a little. He saw that shiver. 
It was like a hand putting them apart. 

The door opened and Kane stood there. 

She said: ‘‘It’s late, Fannie. I’m just going to 
bed. Mrs. Fellowes thought ...” 

She looked at Ripon with frank, honest dislike. 

“I’m going to marry your sister,” he said. 

“No!” Fannie cried sharply. “It isn’t true!” 

“She wouldn’t,” said Kane, slowly and deliberately 
and never taking her eyes off him. “She couldn’t— 
marry—anyone—like—y ou. ’ ’ 

He laughed and swung past them out of the room. 

“Fannie,” Kane said, “he’s just plain beast. Why 
did he come? What does he mean? Mrs. Fellowes 
doesn’t like him. She sent me in. He’s been here such 
a long time. Fannie, what is it?” 

“Did you know,” said Fannie, “that Angus paid for 
this . . . your trousseau, my trip, Judy’s schooling, 
Pat’s schooling, everything?” 

“He bought your freedom,” Fannie said slowly. 
“And he bought my freedom . . . but I didn’t know. 
Oh! Kane! Kane! I’ve been such a fool! Such a 
fool!” 

“I knew you loved him, but you wouldn’t let me 
say so,” said Kane quite quietly. “I’ve known it for 
a long time.” 


The House of Broken Dreams 283 

‘The peace that comes from letting people go their 
own way,” said Fannie. “Kane, it’s unbelievable.” 

“But why did Ripon come?” 

“He came to tell us what we all owe to Angus. 
He thought ... he hoped I would have found the 
debt intolerable. Until he showed me that he thought 
I would, I thought so too. He came to tell me Miss 
Proctor and Papa Pip and little Mr. Cole were starv¬ 
ing. He drew a harrowing picture, Kane. He came 
to say he’d give me a home to offer them if I would 
make a home for him. Conditions, Kane, conditions 
all the time. I told him it wasn’t possible. Besides, 
I know they don’t want to come back and live my life. 
That’s what I made you all do, dear, live my life, but 
I couldn’t see it. Now I’m going to make atonement. 
I’m going to leave you all alone. It’s the hardest thing 
a woman can do, Kane, to leave alone the people she 
loves best. I shall cross to England to-morrow.” 

“Why? Oh! Fannie! Tom may be crossing by 
the same boat.” 

“I can’t help it, dear.” 

“You’re not afraid of Ripon?” 

“I’m not afraid of him exactly. I want to go back, 
dear. I want to rid myself of the house of broken 
dreams and start again, quite free. .You’re all free 
. . . but I’m not free yet.” 

“Fannie . . . will you?” 

“If he asks me.” 

“He’ll ask you.” 

“Gladly then.” 

“Fannie . . . it’s wonderful! You’ll understand.” 


284 The House of Broken Dreams 

“Pm going to join Papa Pip, Miss Proctor and the 
others. ,, 

‘‘Fannie!” 

“I think in a way I want to humble myself. We’re 
all alike. I’d like him to find me there.” 

“Oh! Fannie! Fannie!” 

“I’m stirred up to-night. To-morrow I shall worry 
again in case the old people haven’t quite enough to 
eat. I shall always worry a little because people won’t 
go my way, but I’ve given up expecting them to.” 

“Tom Ripon broke their dreams for them.” 

“I know. I wanted to tell him that. Angus was 
right there too, but I’m not sure they’re not happier. 
There’s a freedom in that too.” 

There was a knock at the door. 

The little page stood outside with a letter on a silver 
salver. 

“From Ripon!” said Kane sharply. 

Fannie tore it open. Then she said in a queer, dull 
voice that seemed torn agonizingly from a swollen 
throat: 

“Don’t say anything to me to-night, Kane. Please, 
please, darling, not! You mustn’t remember what I 
said. I’ve got . . . I’m going to marry Tom.” 

11 

Fannie came back to London alone. 

She explained nothing. 

She seemed, as Kane wrote in a panic to Bobbie 
Buttons, “glazed.” She was quiet, inscrutable; her 
laughter, her new-found eagerness and joy of life 


The House of Broken Dreams 285 

dropped from her; she was again the serious, aloof 
girl who had directed and sought to control their des¬ 
tinies in the house of dreams; and, curiously enough, 
that barrier there had been between herself and all 
her associates reared itself again between her and Kane, 
and Kane could not displace it. The new, almost emo¬ 
tional tenderness there was between the sisters persisted 
but availed nothing. 

“But you don’t love Tom Ripon,” Kane hurled at 
her again and again. 

“I don’t love Tom Ripon,” Fannie agreed. 

Her eyes mirrored something Kane could not read, 
not fear or apprehension, but some distaste evoked by 
a memory associated with him. Kane saw it over and 
over again, saw it in the involuntary curl of her gen¬ 
erous mouth. 

“You don’t love him,” she persisted. 

And Fannie looked at her with those quiet grey eyes 
that were as tranquil as a nun’s. 

“I don’t,” she said quite simply, “but it doesn’t help. 
I’m sorry for him. He’s not a happy man.” 

“That’s not why you’re marrying him.” 

“No,” Fannie agreed, “that’s not the reason. Kane 
dear, leave it alone. I can’t ever tell you. You cant 
ever know. Every time you point to it it gets bigger 
and bigger.” 

She clasped her hands. She was pale. She had 
been sleepless. The two sisters looked at each other. 

“Tell me,” coaxed Kane. 

“I want to! I want to!” quivered Fannie. “And 
I can’t! I can’t ever!” 

“He must have a hold over you,” said Kane. 


“Oh! 


286 The House of Broken Dreams 

Fannie, you don’t know what you’re doing! You 
don’t know what you’re doing!” 

“I know what I’m doing,” contradicted Fannie. 

“You love Angus Reid,” Kane flung at her. 

“I know,” said Fannie; the saddest smile glimmered 
in her eyes. “We’ll have to keep up the disguise now.” 

“What disguise?” 

“The disguise of being good enemies.” She shut 
her eyes as if she would shut something away from 
Kane’s intent, explorative stare. Kane got the odd 
impression of her thoughts, her imagination running 
about in a panic of realization behind the white mask 
of her face. 

“Oh, my dear!” she pleaded. “Leave me alone! 
Leave me alone! You can’t ever begin to understand 
because I can’t ever begin to explain. I shall need 
you in my new life and in your new life. Don’t make 
it impossible for them to join anywhere. Listen! Is 
there anything you want for your new home from the 
house of broken dreams?” 

“Nothing!” said Kane violently. “Nothing.” 

“Miss Proctor and Papa Pip and little Mr. Cole 
must have the thing they love best, and I shall let all 
the rest go,” said Fannie. 

“You wouldn’t live there with Ripon?” 

“I couldn’t!” Fannie protested sharply. “I 
couldn’t.” 

“Can’t I come with you?” 

“No! No! Stay here with Bobbie’s mother, and 
buy pretty things and look forward, darling, not back. 
Let me see this through. It doesn’t belong to you or 
Judy or Pat except as a jumping-off ground, and 


The House of Broken Dreams 287 

you’ve all jumped off safely and happily. I’m so glad 
of that, so grateful to Angus.” 

“Does Tom Ripon know when you’re returning? 
Will he meet you?” 

“No.” 

“But Fannie ...” 

Fannie put a hand gently over her mouth. 

“Leave it, my dear,” she urged gently. “Leave 
it.” 

So Kane went away and wrote Bobbie a hectic letter 
of dismay and stormy hatred of Ripon. 

“He’s got a hold over her,” she wrote. “Get her 
free, Bobbie. Get hold of Angus Reid. I believe 
if he made love to her. Bobbie, she’s never had anyone 
make love to her . . . if he took her by storm. It’s 
the queerest situation. She never denies her love for 
Angus. I believe she’s been honest about it to Ripon, 
but I’m sure he’ll get her unless you do something! 
She goes in an hour or two. She goes straight home. 
Perhaps Ripon will meet her. Go round and see her. 
Only do something somehow. She’s quite, quite hon¬ 
est. She never tries to evade it, she loves Angus Reid 
and she’s going to marry Tom Ripon; she’s as positive 
about one as about the other. I can’t make her out. 
She’s become the big sister again and I can’t get near 
her, although she’s close to me in the way a mother 
might be. She can only see one road and she’s looking 
straight down it, and she’s going to walk to the end 
of it. I feel that. At the end of it is that bounder 
Ripon. We none of us like him. We’ve none of us 
ever liked him. I thought it was all over. Now it’s 
all cropped up again. Only it’s worse this time. She 


288 The House of Broken Dreams 

seemed so offhand, I mean in that way, when she came 
out here. His letters used to make her angry with the 
old people. Reading between the lines you would see 
how they were treating him because they hadn’t suc¬ 
ceeded. That used to make her angry, not in a per¬ 
sonal way, but in an ordinary way, as if it were 
injustice to a stranger. Oh, Bobbie dear, do something, 
for pity’s sake.” 

Robert de Bouton went round to the house of 
dreams at once. 

The little Punchinello butler let him in. His face 
wore an expression of ominous gravity. 

“Miss Fannie is in her study, sir,” he said. 

“Alone?” 

“At the moment. Miss Proctor, Papa Pip and Mr. 
Cole are back in their old quarters, helping her clear 
out her father’s papers and so on. It’s a terrible busi¬ 
ness. The sale is the day after to-morrow.” 

“Look here, all this I hear isn’t true ?” 

“There’s no knowing what you’ve heard, sir.” 

“Miss Fannie’s not going to marry Tom Ripon.” 

“He says so, sir. He was here last night and again 
this morning.” 

“Good God! The thing is unthinkable!” 

“I think it’s true enough, sir.” 

“Look here! What do you know ?” 

“What I’m told, sir,” answered the little Punchi¬ 
nello butler promptly. 

Bobbie looked him straight in the eye. 

“I suppose you’ve your own reasons for not telling 
me,” he said quietly. “Very well, I’m going to find 
out.” 


The House of Broken Dreams 289 

‘‘Yes sir/' said the little butler expressionlessly. 

He peeped into the drawing-room on the way to the 
study. A mist of overgrown green veiled the window 
at the far end; underneath the other window that over¬ 
looked the square knelt Miss Proctor tying books into 
bundles. 

“Well?” he said sternly, “this is a pretty business.” 

“I think it’s the best thing that could possibly hap¬ 
pen,” said Miss Proctor blithely. “We’re all of us 
starting all over again.” 

“I’m referring to Fannie and Ripon.” 

The brightness faded out of the old lady’s eyes. 

“Oh, that!” she said. “That I don’t understand 
at all. Fannie’s not happy. That I can tell you. I 
think she despises Ripon from the bottom of her 
heart.” 

“Looks like it!” 

“If you saw them together you’d know.” 

“Have you any idea why she’s agreed to marry 
him?” 

“Not the least in the world.” 

“Our friend the Punchinello downstairs knows.” 

“I give you my word I don’t, Bobbie. My solemn 
word!” 

“I believe you,” said Bobbie. 

He walked rather slowly and heavily along the cor¬ 
ridor to Fannie’s little green-and-white study. 

“Of course,” she said, greeting him, “you’ve come 
to hear all about Kane.” 

“It can actually wait,” he told her quietly, “until 
I’ve heard all about you.” 

She flashed a quick look at him. She looked abom- 


290 The House of Broken Dreams 

inably ill and yet beautiful; her grey eyes were tragic 
with those black circles of sleeplessness and worry 
beneath them. 

“I have nothing to tell you.” 

“Kane says you are going to marry Tom Ripon. 
Why?” 

She made a fluttering, protesting gesture with her 
white hands. 

“Oh, Bobbie! not you too!” 

“Particularly me! Pm Angus Reid’s friend.” 

She said: 

“Look here! I don’t pretend to misunderstand, 
Bobbie, but you mustn’t go on. Please don’t go on. 
He had so much of it from all of them.” 

“You must be mad,” he said, “knowing what you 
know about Angus and yourself, knowing what you 
feel and what he feels. Ah! you know right enough. 
I can see it in your face. I knew before Angus knew. 
I knew right from the very first that Angus was going 
to love you. You talk of marrying Tom Ripon. Good 
God! girl! be decent.” 

She was quite white, like a mask lifted to him. 
Through the window he saw Papa Pip in the little gar¬ 
den, lifting things, little plants as if they were little 
children who had fallen. 

“You’re going to be my brother,” she said. “I beg 
of you . . . It’s all so useless, and they keep on and 
on. I’m so tired, so tired! Can’t you see how dread¬ 
fully tired I am, Bobbie?” 

“Yes,” said Bobbie, “I can.” 

“Tom and I are going abroad,” she faltered. “Away 
to the East. We shall be away a year. When I come 


The House of Broken Dreams 291 

back we shall have got used to things. Judy has writ¬ 
ten to know if she can go to Switzerland these summer 
holidays with a school friend and her mother. It all 
works out so well. Kane will be married to you. When 
we come back it will all be settled. Other people will 
be living here. It will all seem such a long way back 
that it will be easy to go on going on.” 

“So that's the way you talk, and that doesn’t show 
you! Fannie, my dear, have you gone mad?” 

“No! no! I am saner than any of you. That is 
what is so funny, but you worry me until I am nearly 
mad. I am so tired, Bobbie; can’t you see how tired 
I am? Let me talk to you about Kane, Bobbie. She 
goes to see your mother every day, and next week when 
Professor and Mrs. Fellowes come back to England 
she will go and stay there altogether. Mrs. Fellowes 
hates to part with her. She’s been like a daughter. She 
looks so pretty, Bobbie, prettier than ever, and so 
happy.” 

“She’s not happy.” 

“But she’s going to be, Bobbie. All this . . . this 
agitation will settle in a very little while and things 
will be normal. It is for the best. Whatever and 
however things look now, it is for the best.” 

“I wish I could find Angus.” 

“Where is he?” Fannie asked eagerly, and bit her 
lip. 

He looked at her with a faint, malicious triumph. 

“You see what it does to you, Fannie! Just the 
mere mention of his name. Oh! you’re a queer girl, 
you always have been, but you won’t escape the univer¬ 
sal penalties of love. You’re paying double for trying 


292 The House of Broken Dreams 

to evade them. That damned old mother of Angus 
knows where he is, but the moment I mentioned I 
wanted him for you she shut up like a rat trap. He’s 
gone somewhere on business connected with one of 
the estates. I’ve telegraphed everywhere I could. I’ve 
left a note at his diggings asking him to come on here 
the moment he returns.” 

“Oh, no!” she said sharply. 

He sat on the edge of the desk and peered at her 
with his brilliant blue eyes. His brown, blunt-featured 
face was solemn. He gripped her shoulder. 

“Look here,” he said. “I’m going to talk straight 
out. You’ve got to listen. You’ve got to understand. 
God knows what crazy rivalry or pity is making you 
offer this man marriage. It isn’t marriage. It’s some¬ 
thing no woman has any right to offer any man. It’s 
hideous and ugly and valueless and even unclean. It’s 
no good looking at me like that. You’re out of your 
fairy-tale. I don’t know that you ever had any right 
in it.” 

She wrenched herself from under his hand. 

“Be quiet,” she said. “You don’t know in the least 
what you are talking about. I’m not tricking Tom. He 
knows I love Angus, because I told him.” 

“Let me tell you something,” Bobbie said. “Let 
me tell you something about Angus Reid. He’s a 
one-woman man and he was your man right from the 
very first. He’s tried to love women enough to marry 
them. I’ve seen him. I watched him with Marjorie 
Moneypenny. They never touched him. He had every 
cause to marry. Not many men want to marry. Fewer 
than you women dream. Angus wanted to marry, be- 


The House of Broken Dreams 293 

cause he’s essentially a family man. He delights in a 
sense of responsibility. He has a passionately proprie¬ 
torial instinct. His mother wanted him to marry and 
settle down. He has a lot of little estates to administer. 
His life as country squire suited him, as their lives 
suit few men. It only lacked one thing—his woman 
and his children. He sought his woman consciously 
and subconsciously. He never found her till he found 
you. I’ve loved many women a little. Angus hasn’t. 
His love was something he wanted to give and couldn’t. 
He envied me. I think he would rather have liked 
the thrill no one ever gave him until you came into 
his life. I don’t know if I were a woman that I’d want 
to be a man’s first love. Not one woman in a thousand 
is. But you are. If he had kept a thousand harems 
you still would be!” 

She was quiet under his detaining hand, his detain¬ 
ing eyes. He could read nothing in her face but over¬ 
powering weariness. 

“But you’ve been looking for your man,” he said. 
“And when you found him in Angus Reid it was like 
giving up your freedom, and you weren’t big enough 
to do it. You let men come into your consciousness 
deliberately just in order to dismiss them. That gave 
you a sense of sex freedom that you knew the other 
women round you hadn’t got. You were proud that 
you could dismiss them. There are lots of women like 
you, Fannie. They wear their crown of virginity com¬ 
bined with a passionate desire for voluntary abdica¬ 
tion. When Angus came you weren’t big enough to 
let go. You fought it, and your love burnt fiercer 
because you chose to call it hate. I had done with 


294 The House of Broken Dreams 

women the day after I met Kane in this house, but I 
knew before I had done with them. I know your type. 
You think you are a temperament, but you are a type. 
All women are types. The reason you had no men 
before Angus is the same reason Angus had no women 
before he met you. You had not met the right one. 
When you did, it came as a shock to your self-suf¬ 
ficiency, your sex egotism ... it was that that re¬ 
volted, not the natural, aloof virginity you prided 
yourself upon. You never had it. You were looking 
for Angus. You belonged to him before you met him, 
and you knew it when you met him. It is a virtue 
in neither of you. There will be no other man for 
you. Angus had you when he raised in you that blind 
anger that is the recognition of capture and is the 
most satisfying emotion that natures like yours can 
know. You called this the house of dreams, 
Fannie, and you’ve seen them broken one by one, 
and you know they were hampering delusions.” 

She looked at him with wide, clear eyes. 

“All that you say is true. I have known it for a 
long time. I must put it behind me. I have learnt to 
look things in the face. Don’t imagine me skulking 
behind facts. I have turned things over and over again 
and again.” 

He stared at her. He saw her stirred; her emotion¬ 
alism, her utter weariness touched her with a beauty 
his brown Kane would never have. She was beautiful, 
with her great thought-ridden eyes, her coronet of 
stivery, copper-coloured hair and her generous, pas¬ 
sionate, quivering red mouth. She had capitulated. 
All the old conventions, the old delusions with which 


The House of Broken Dreams 295 

she decked herself in her own eyes were discarded. 
She was at the moment more simple than she had ever 
believed herself, more single-minded. 

He said huskily, gripping her hands: 

“Don’t fight, old lady, don’t fight . . . it’s like 
fighting against God, the puniness of you and the great¬ 
ness of It. You hoped for love.” 

“I hoped for love.” 

“You waited for it.” 

“I waited for it,” she said unsteadily. 

The quick twilight of early Spring had come while 
they talked. He seemed near to her in that warm 
glow of understanding, nearer almost than he had ever 
been to Kane. 

He felt her tears hot on his hand. 

“And love came,” he said softly. 

“But it can’t make any difference, Bobbie dear,” 
she said. “You don’t understand. It can’t make any 
difference.” 

* * * * * 

He heard the little cry she gave; but he had seen 
the thing of which it was just the voice flying in her 
eyes and quivering in her face. 

“Oh, Angus!” she said. “Oh, Angus!” 

Angus said urgently, swiftly: 

“I found the letter and I came at once.” 

She put her two hands, spread, palm inwards against 
his breast. She was not crying, but her voice was 
heavy like an old woman’s with the force of her pent- 
up tears. 


2g6 The House of Broken Dreams 

“You know I am marrying Tom Ripon to¬ 
morrow ?” 

“I made him let me come to you.” 

“Oh, Angus! Angus!” 

“He knows what I am going to say to you. It must 
be told. I can’t go through life and not have told you, 
not have had you listen. Fannie, he gave me half an 
hour. Half an hour of all the time that will be his. 
But that’s ours, ours! Nothing can ever take it from 
us.” 

“I have got to marry him.” 

“I know. I know. I understand. I love you, sweet¬ 
heart; that is the first and last thing that matters to 
me.” 

Bobbie de Bouton closed the door very gently after 
him. 

He went downstairs. 

“Is Mr. Ripon in?” he said to the little Punchinello 
butler. 

“He said he would return in half an hour. His 
taxi followed Mr. Reid’s.” He looked at Bobbie 
queerly. “They talked together on the pavement, and 
then Mr. Reid came in alone, sir.” 

“Yes,” said Bobbie. “I know.” He paused. “Show 
Mr. Ripon into the drawing-room.” 

“He usually goes straight to the study, sir.” 

“Very well,” said Bobbie, still more slowly. “I’ll 
sit in the hall till he returns.” 

hi 

It grew dark and quiet; through the glass panel 
above the front door Bobbie saw the faint silver point- 


The House of Broken Dreams 297 

ing of stars. His thoughts settled slumbrously and 
then wheeled away, startled by some faint noise. There 
were only faint echoes, little brittle scurryings of dis¬ 
tant mice, the crack of old wood like the impress of 
a ghostly footstep, old, old noises like echoes of some 
vivid, eager past life that was slowly settling into decay. 

There was magic in that house; there was enchant¬ 
ment. 

It laid its spell upon the queer artist soul of Robert 
de Bouton as he sat there, quickening in him the apprec¬ 
iation of its origin. Life flowed in and out of old 
places like a sea; and like a shell this place held the 
mystery, the fascination, the echo of the life that had 
worked itself restlessly through it without revealing 
anything. 

The wave the O’Ranes had made was retreating, 
and soon another set of lives would make another 
wave; that was its magic, the barely perceptible impress 
of many comings and goings that gave it an atmos¬ 
phere of immortality. 

He was at the door before Tom Ripon had time 
to ring. Out of the shadow of the unlighted hall the 
white disc faces of the two men loomed at each other 
above their dark bodies. 

“Come in,” said Bobbie Buttons. His hand flew 
from his side in an unconsciously compelling gesture, 
and in a queer, disembodied way it fluttered down 
and seemed to lie detached against the darkness of 
his trouser leg. 

“What the devil do you want?” said Tom Ripon. 
Then he broke out suddenly: “It’s too late in the day, 
my friend! It’s too late in the day!” He seemed 


298 The House of Broken Dreams 

to throw his voice behind Bobbie, as if he asked a 
question of the unanswering shadows. “I gave them 
half an hour to say good-bye/’ he said. “They’ve had 
more than that. I’ve been generous.” 

Bobbie took him by the arm. 

“You are coming quietly into the drawing-room,” 
he said, “and you are going to wait there, quietly, 
until midnight if need be, until Angus has 
exhausted every argument that love and common sense 
can dictate to prevent that idiot girl committing this 
crazy marriage.” 

“I’ve got the cards,” said Tom Ripon. “I don’t like 
force. I’ve had too much of it. I’ve got the cards. 
I can afford to wait till long after midnight if neces¬ 
sary. I know you’re against me, de Bouton; the whole 
place is against me, but I’ll carry it. I hold a card you 
don’t know anything about. You’ll never know any¬ 
thing about it. You’ll always wonder.” 

“You shan’t butt in an hour before they let you in.” 

“I can afford to wait,” said Tom Ripon. “But give 
me a whisky-and-soda. I’m nearly all in.” 

“You can have that,” said de Bouton. 

“And don’t turn on the lights. I can’t stand them. 
It doesn’t matter to you whether we wait in darkness. 
We shan’t have long to wait. Don’t claw my arm, 
you fool. I’m not going to make a bolt for the study 
door. I can afford to wait.” 

“Good Lord! are you a man at all?” 

“Not by your standards,” said Tom Ripon wearily. 
“Let’s have that whisky-and-soda. It’s perfectly all 
right. I’m not going to move. If I made for the door 


The House of Broken Dreams 299 

I know exactly what you'd do.” He paused. ‘‘Well, 
I don’t want you to do it.” 

Miss Proctor looked up from her books in a startled 
way as they came in. 

“I didn’t expect . . .’’she said. “Shall I go away ?” 

“It doesn’t make any difference,” Tom Ripon said 
unexpectedly. “Nothing makes any difference to the 
end. This is forced sentimental delay. An over- 
zealous friend.” He made a gesture towards de Bou¬ 
ton. “My God! I’m tired, tired!” He sat down 
and looked at them. “I’m overstrung,” he said. “I’ve 
had them before . . . fancies. I ought to know them. 
It isn’t your scorn, your laughter, I care about. It’s 
this place. It always has, it always will, laugh. Shall 
I tell you something? I’m afraid of it. It’s a funny 
house, that’s what it is. I know what you think of me, 
both of you. I’ve always known.” He looked at 
Emily Proctor. “I could have told you just when you 
altered your old point of view because it suited you, 
and just when you permitted it to return. I’ll tell you 
what I think of you. You’re fools, but you’re 
lucky, healthy fools. You can’t ever see the 
edge of life like I do sometimes. You don’t 
understand. I don’t know that I can explain. It is 
as if the world suddenly turned square and you found 
yourself on the edge of it with nothing below you but 
space, and only you knew it was square. Fannie is 
going to stand between me and the edge. She is going 
to keep the world round for me in all the pretty, con¬ 
ventional, futile, well-bred ways that keep you from 
suddenly seeing the futility and the utter meaningless¬ 
ness of it all. Her idealism, her petty sentimentalism, 


300 The House of Broken Dreams 

all her futile, pretty femininisms, her conventional, 
passionate belief in the end and the importance of man¬ 
kind and the necessity of conforming to standard shall 
be my salvation, my buttress against myself.” 

“You only think of yourself.” 

“I need her. God knows no man ever needed a 
woman more. Isn’t that what we’re all seeking in our 
ghastly hidden loneliness . . . the need of being vital 
to someone.” 

“She loves Angus Reid,” Miss Proctor twittered 
earnestly. 

“And I love her,” said Tom Ripon. “Who is to 
say which is the greater, love or need, or which should 
win.” 

“Reid loves her,” Bobbie burst out impulsively. 

“He has what I have tried to acquire and failed to 
get—a rule of conduct, fixed stars to guide by. He 
has them stronger than any man I know. Because he 
fancies that he sees a road he makes it. I see no road, 
I believe in no stars. My forebears cut no road for 
me. When I look back I see only the pit from which I 
came. My way is set about with the roads that other 
men and their fathers have hewed. I cannot take them. 
They are not mine. They are foreign to me. I have 
had my moments of absurd, godlike exaltation when I 
have conquered things; but they have broken like 
moments that never had real life, and I have found 
myself at the meaningless, terrible edge of things again. 
Fannie would make Angus Reid a superb wife; that is 
why I need her. I cannot, cannot believe in the im¬ 
portance of life or of myself. Fannie believes pas¬ 
sionately. She shall teach me to believe. You think 


The House of Broken Dreams 301 

I’m mad. You think I’m quite mad. Men who think 
hide away this secret belief of being nothing in a void, 
and when it masters them they are hidden away that 
they may not infect others and that the panoply and 
pageant of life may go on and men keep sane and safe 
in the belief of their own real existence and importance. 
I don’t care what you both think of me because I am 
so near safety. Fannie’s delusions shall become my 
beliefs as they are hers; she shall fold me in her own 
inestimable self-importance, and I shall be at rest 
and I shall be grateful, and I shall show my gratitude 
as few men do, because I have imagination and I shall 
never forget the icy nothingness from which she has 
rescued me. What is love but gratitude for what you 
get or what you give ? I shall both give and receive in 
ways past your understanding.” 

The room was quite dark now. A crescent moon 
peered through the window that overlooked the gar¬ 
den ; the light from the lamp in the square was on the 
window like a gold ribbon thrown across ebony. 

The door opened and Papa Pip came in. 

‘‘Emily,” he said, “ I think we ought to go home.” 

He switched the light on and stared at them sur¬ 
prised. 

“Turn the light off and keep vigil, Papa Pip,” Tom 
Ripon said harshly. “The more the merrier. They 
will not let me go up to Fannie till Angus Reid has 
left her. It is so absurd, because the result will be the 
same and the memory will last longer, and it will be 
the memory that will hurt them. Nothing else but the 
memory.” 

His eyes were brilliant, his face grey. He leant for- 


302 The House of Broken Dreams 

ward and smiled, and they felt he smiled at things they 
did not see, things of which they had become merely 
the outward symbols. 

“You can’t do anything,” he said defiantly. “None 
of you can do anything. We are waiting for the 
result of what has gone before.” 

IV 

In the study there was no light either. 

Fannie sat in her little chair and Angus knelt beside 
her, his arms round her, his cheek against her, so 
that when either of them spoke it was as if their joint 
thoughts left them like things mutually released, and 
they were conscious of a sense of happy lightness and 
ineffable satisfaction and pleasure. 

The moment Bobbie left them alone Fannie sprang 
at explanations, almost as if they were not the vital 
thing but some slight barrier to be cleared swiftly away 
and leave their time free. 

“If I do not marry Tom Ripon he will tell Philip 
Kerr about Gladys. They are waiting for the baby. 
Angus, they’re so wonderful. I was there yesterday. 
I think I meant to tell her what Tom threatened, and 
plead. I couldn’t. Tom told me what he was going to 
say. He has learnt it like a speech. Clever, so clever! 
Tom isn’t like other people. He would do it. Philip is 
a holy man surrounded by weak people. He’s the sort 
of man weak people go to and are kept safe. He is 
to go to another and larger living. He will be a big 
influence, yet I know, I know he’s not a big enough 
man to know. If he were he might be a bigger man, 


The House of Broken Dreams 303 

but he wouldn’t be useful to others any more. Angus, 
don’t look like that. I can’t bear it, dear. Don’t look 
like that. Don’t interrupt. Let me go on. I’ve 
thought and thought. I knew if you came I wouldn’t 
deny your love. I didn’t even hope you wouldn’t come 
in time. I prayed you would. Listen how I see this 
thing. We’ve such a little time. Let us get it straight.” 

“It isn’t straight!” 

“It is, my dear, it is. That’s the awful part of 
it, so straight that we can only walk down it as if it 
were the only road in all the world. It isn’t even sac¬ 
rifice; it’s just adjusting ourselves.” 

“I can’t see it like that! My God! Fannie! I 
can’t. I guessed—coming here I suddenly saw what 
his cards were.” 

“I think it would really be a release for Gladys if 
Philip knew, but her hope of usefulness would be gone 
too. She’s secretly crucified all the time by the fact 
that he doesn’t know, that nobody knows, and it gives 
her something . . . some atmosphere that is a source 
of inspiration to Philip and to everyone she comes in 
contact with. She is! Oh, Angus! she is. She isn’t 
the same Gladys. She’s utterly, utterly indifferent. I 
felt it. The house, everything in it was good, sancti¬ 
fied. Believe me! believe me, Angus, it’s the truth I’m 
telling you! They’ve made him a prison chaplain, and 
he takes into the prison . . . that sanctification, that 
sureness of goodness . . . that wideness of vision that 
has come to them both out of this. We can’t rob them 
of it, because we are robbing so many others.” 

Her hands touched his face, framed it warmly. 


304 The House of Broken Dreams 

“I love you so, she said. “You don't know how 
I love you." 

He was quite quiet under her hands and eyes. 

“Is this all we are going to get out of life?" he 
said, “this hour?" 

She stirred neither her steady hands nor eyes. 

“It is, my dear. You know it is. I don't know 
whether we lose or gain by being ourselves, people 
to whom furtive reunions would be soiling. I 
couldn’t do it. I'm not going to do it. I must get 
something out of this love that has come too late. It's 
far too beautiful and wonderful to leave our lives 
empty. Let us at least have the consciousness that 
it is not as other loves quite, that it has left us sancti¬ 
fied in some queer way." 

“Tom Ripon wasn’t bluffing?" 

“He wasn’t bluffing," she said. “I’d swear to that." 

“There isn't any way out?" 

“There isn’t any way out at all, Angus, except over 
broken lives and trusts and faiths. I have a consola¬ 
tion that you haven’t. The knowledge that Tom really 
needs me." 

He said with a sudden flash of insight: “We don’t 
seem to have anything to tell each other. It is as if 
all things are told and understood." 

She said, like a child-woman, with her voice sharp 
with pain: 

“You’ll marry, Angus?" 

“I can’t see beyond this," he told her. “For me all 
things that matter seem to end here and now. I’m 
going to talk to Tom Ripon when he comes. There 


The House of Broken Dreams 305 

must be some humanity in him somewhere, some spark 
of decency.” 

"I told him I loved you. Over and over again I’ve 
told him. I’ve pleaded. I’ve told him what I think of 
him. It’s no good. He wants me. In his way he 
wants me as much as you want me. He isn’t quite 
like other men. It isn’t any good, my dear. It isn’t 
any good.” Her voice sounded as if she were crying. 
“We shall have this hour always, my dear, if we build 
it now. If love was to go on it would be crowded 
out by other hours, other emotions, but it is going to 
stand quite alone.” 

He held her close. He could not tell what he felt 
or knew. He seemed to know all things and hold the 
sum of them in his arms. He sensed the minutes rac¬ 
ing by, and yet it gave him a proud, high feeling of 
immortality to let them go in silence and immobility. 
He held her cheek against his; her hair moved restlessly 
on his forehead; it seemed warm and alive. His 
thoughts whirled by him like leaves. He knew that 
once they had grown, they had possessed form and 
meaning. 

“You and I, Fannie,” he said. “You and I,” and 
rocked her a little unconsciously in his arms. 

“It all finishes here,” she whispered. “The house 
of broken dreams.” 

The house, the world, the hour seemed to close softly 
round them like doors enclosing their loneliness. 

“Let us give each other things to remember.” She 
twisted her hands in his. 

“You know all I would say.” 


306 The House of Broken Dreams 

“But I want to hear it.” 

He found words then. He flung them burning, 
gauging each one with a desperate cunning, against 
her quiet resolution. He lost consciousness of his 
own personality and hers. Yet as he pursued her with 
tireless pleas and arguments he suddenly grew tired, 
tired and sick, as if he had importuned her for an 
eternity. The brilliant flare of words died down and 
left him in an arid mental darkness where he only 
recognized his coming loss of her. And as if she had 
actually fled from him and was weary with her flight, 
she cried out in a small, tired, broken voice: 

“Oh! you are making me so tired and weak, Angus. 
It’s cruel of you, cruel of you,” and broke into pas¬ 
sionate sobbing. 

H e did not know what he said. His resolution, 
his anger, that had been as much against her for 
her denial of him as against Ripon was suddenly 
broken up into inarticulate tenderness that hurt him 
more than his anger, that was like a pressure that 
crushed his hope and happiness and carried him round 
and round relentlessly in a circle made by his own 
unhappiness and hers. 

She clung to him. 

It can t be long before he comes,” she whispered. 
“Angus . . . promise you’ll go away before he comes.” 

“I promise.” 

“When I hear him along the passage.” 

“When you hear him along the passage.” 

“Kiss me good-bye now.” 

He kissed her. 


The House of Broken Dreams 307 

He would not have kissed, had he known it was 
to be a kiss of greeting, not of farewell. The room 
closed over them like a tent of darkness, and in it 
they met for the first time. In it he became aware 
not only of her beauty and wonder, but of his own, 
so that the resultant ecstasy was as if they pressed it 
upon each other, a mutual gift. 

He said: 

“Sweetheart, you can’t! You can’t! Nobody could 
after that!” 

She seemed to creep close to him for comfort and 
shelter. He could see her eyes wide and frightened. 

“I can’t bear very much more,” she said. “I wish, 
I wish, he’d come!” 


v 

Little Mr. Cole turned on the light. 

He did not mean to see anyone. Yet he made a little 
gesture that included them all, Tom Ripon, Bobbie 
Buttons, everyone. 

Then he turned off the light again. 

“You can turn it on,” said Miss Proctor sharply. 
“I’m tired of sitting here in the dark.” 

He turned it on and looked at her, looked at them 
all. 

“Miss Bright has just been here from the vicarage,” 
he said. 

“Boy or girl?” broke in Miss Proctor cheerfully. 

“I don’t know,” he said. 

“Didn’t you ask?” 


308 The House of Broken Dreams 

“Gladys Kerr is dead,” the little man said sadly. 
“She and the baby. They’re both dead.” 

“Why!” exclaimed Miss Proctor. “Why!” She 
looked at him stupidly, unbelievingly, with her mouth 
open, and then, suddenly, as if she had heard the news 
repeated, began to cry. 

“Someone ought to tell Fannie,” said Papa Pip 
sharply. 

Involuntarily they looked at Tom Ripon, and he 
looked back at them strangely, almost as if he saw 
them from a long way off. 

“You don’t know,” he said thickly, unsteadily, “how 
f-funny it all is.” He paused. “You wouldn’t think 
a little thing like that would alter all my plans.” 

“Look here!” Robert de Bouton burst out. 

“Save it!” Ripon said. “Save it! I’m going away. 
I’m going out of England. You mayn’t think it, but 
I loved Fannie O’Rane. That’s what makes it all 
so darn funny. I’m going right away. I should like 
you to say that.” 

They had risen to their feet. They were staring at 
him. 

“The house of broken dreams, you called it,” he 
said, with a little bow. “That’s damn funny too/* 

He walked to the door and looked back at them. 

“Good-bye,” he said. “I love to be dramatic. You 
none of you understand.” They could not tell whether 
it was tears or laughter that leapt into his brilliant 
eyes. “I am always making effective exits and entries, 
and only I know that I pass from emptiness to empti¬ 
ness.” He turned to little Mr. Cole. “If I w T ere you,” 


The House of Broken Dreams 309 

he said, “I should let Angus Reid tell Fannie that 
Gladys Kerr is dead. She will marry Angus Reid. 
There is a little of the mountebank in both of us, Mr. 
Cole. I would be what we so dearly love ... a 
supreme beau geste ” 


THE END 

























































I 


























































